Unlock the secrets of color psychology in this episode of Website Success! Discover how the right hues can make or break your website’s first impression, influence user behavior, and align with your brand’s personality. Tune in to master the art of using color effectively!
Listen to the Episode
Show Notes
In this episode, Chrissy Rey dives into the fascinating world of color psychology and its impact on branding and website design. Learn how different colors can evoke various emotions and how to choose the right color palette for your brand and website.
Timestamps
- 0:17 – Introduction to the episode and the podcast
- 0:53 – Why we’re talking about color psychology today
- 1:19 – What is color psychology?
- 2:09 – The importance of color psychology in making a first impression
- 3:03 – The meaning and feelings behind different colors
- 10:20 – How to think about your target audience when choosing colors
- 11:38 – The personality and vibe of your brand
- 12:15 – Demographic considerations for color choices
- 13:09 – Cultural implications of color
- 13:41 – Teaser for the next episode on color theory
- 14:03 – Episode wrap-up and call to action
Key Takeaways
- What is Color Psychology?
- It’s the study of how colors influence our feelings and actions.
- Why is it Important?
- You have a split second to make a first impression, and color plays a big role in that.
- Color Meanings
- Red: Energetic, passionate
- Blue: Calm, trustworthy
- Green: Growth, health, tranquility
- Yellow: Hope, happiness
- Pink: Romance, sweetness, femininity
- Gray: Neutral, balanced
- Purple: Royalty, luxury, creativity
- Orange: Friendly, youthful
- Black: Elegant, sophisticated
- White: Clean, pure
- Audience Considerations
- Think about how your target audience will perceive the colors you choose.
- Brand Personality
- Your colors should reflect the personality or vibe you want your brand to have.
Resources Mentioned
- Brands that use color effectively: Target, Coca Cola, Netflix, Facebook, IBM, Whole Foods, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Victoria’s Secret, Apple, Cadbury, Twitch, Nickelodeon, Home Depot, Chanel, Adidas, Nike, Tesla.
Transcript
Chrissy Rey 0:17
Welcome to Website Success, the ultimate podcast that turns website zeros into heroes. I’m your host, Chrissy Rey, and with over 25 years of website creation experience under my belt, I’m here to guide you every step of the way. Join me on this exhilarating journey. And you’ll learn how to transform your online presence, attract your target audience, and effortlessly convert them into loyal customers. Let’s embark on this transformative adventure together and conquer the digital world, one pixel at a time.
Chrissy Rey 0:53
Hey, everyone, welcome back to Website Success. Have you ever wondered why Facebook is blue? Or why eco friendly brands often go for green? Well sit back and listen in because today we are going to talk about that by diving into the fascinating world of color psychology. And this applies to both branding and your website. So try to think about both of those as we go through this discussion.
Chrissy Rey 1:19
So first question is, what is Color Psychology? Well, imagine yourself walking into a room that’s painted bright red, and think about how that color makes you feel. What are you feeling when you walk into that room. And if your typical American, you probably feel energized, or maybe even a little bit anxious. Now imagine that room in soft blue, and you probably get a totally different reaction, you probably feel more calm and relaxed with that color. And that right there, that’s color psychology. So it’s like the rooms vibe, but it’s going to be for your brand, or your website, or whatever it is that you’re designing. So Color Psychology is the study of how colors influence our feelings and our actions.
Chrissy Rey 2:09
So why is color psychology so important? Well, you’ve got a split second to make that first impression online. And I’m not kidding about it being a split second, you have probably about half a second if not less, and colors are going to play a big role in that first impression that’s going to be what most people are going to see first is the colors that are on your website or your brand. So think of it like meeting someone for the first time, you want to make a really good first impression. So like you wouldn’t wear your pajamas to a job interview unless your job interview was with a pajamas store or something like that. But the same goes for your website, the colors you choose set the tone for your brand. And same thing with the colors for your brand. So you do need to use some color psychology to help you pick the colors for your brand and ultimately for your website.
Chrissy Rey 3:03
Now, I do want to talk about the meaning and feelings behind some of the colors that you might use for your brand and ultimately for your website. And keep in mind as I go through these colors that the meanings and feelings are based on the average US audience, so different cultures are going to see colors in or feel about colors in different ways.
Chrissy Rey 3:25
So the first color I want to talk about is red. And red is the color of stop signs, sales, tags, things like that. And it screams Hey, look at me, it’s usually going to make people feel energetic, possibly passionate. So red is kind of like that friend who can hype up any party. And if you think about brands that use that color red, you can think about target, Coca Cola, Netflix, and red is often used for call to action buttons. So it really kind of stands out well depending on what other colors you’re using in your palette. But red is going to draw people to it and get them to click in a lot of cases.
Chrissy Rey 4:03
The next color is blue. So picture the ocean, calm, deep, trustworthy. And that’s what blue often evokes and people so it’s why you see it in a lot of bank logos and tech logos tech website. So think about brands like Facebook and IBM. There. They want to be the dependable friend who always shows up when you need them. So again, deep and trustworthy.
Chrissy Rey 4:30
Now we have green, and with green, you can imagine a peaceful forest, or a field of fresh vegetables or a large field of grass we’ve ever gone out and just laid in the grass and just felt yourself at one with nature. And that’s why it’s used for a lot of eco friendly brands. And green is all about growth, health tranquility. So it’s not just for eco friendly brands, but it’s also widely used for wellness brands, and if you think about who uses it, some that might come to mind for you would be brands like Whole Foods, and Starbucks and Whole Foods is definitely going to be in that eco friendly realm.
Chrissy Rey 5:13
The next color is yellow. With yellow, you can think of a sunny day, full of hope and happiness. And a brand that uses this color really well is McDonald’s. But you do have to be careful with this color. Because too much yellow can feel overwhelming, kind of like being out in the sun for too long, so you do have to be careful with it.
Chrissy Rey 5:35
Next I want to talk about pink. It’s often the color associated with romance, and sweetness, femininity. It’s kind of like the candy floss of colors. It’s soft and fluffy and oh, so sweet. Pink is really good for brands that use it like Victoria’s Secret. If you if you think of pink, Victoria’s Secret I in fact, I think they have pink is one of the things that they put on some of their, their, their clothing. But Victoria’s Secret is a really good example of a brand that uses pink effectively to evoke feelings of femininity.
Chrissy Rey 6:10
Next one is gray. And gray is a neutral color. It’s the neutral of neutrals, it’s kind of like the Switzerland of colors. It’s balanced, it’s modern. And it can play well with pretty much any other color. So and if you think about Gray, you’ve got cool grays, you’ve got warm gray. So it just depends on which way that gray is going, which colors might go with it. But a lot of times you can use it as a background to make other colors pop. And brands like Apple use gray pretty effectively, they use gray silver, kind of a shade of grey, but they use that pretty effectively. And if you look at the Apple website, then you’ll see that they have a lot of white, gray, black, and then they use a lot of photography to really kind of judge up their website.
Chrissy Rey 6:57
The next color I want to talk about is purple, which is often thought of as the color of royalty and creativity is sort of the mysterious, artsy friend in your group. It’s really good for brands that want to appear luxurious. So like Cadbury, you know, if you’ve ever had Cadbury they’ve got some really great chocolates. And so you think well I don’t know if you think luxury when you think of Cadbury, but they want you to think of luxury. And it’s also really good for creative websites or creative brands. So brands like Twitch would use purple.
Chrissy Rey 7:33
Another color that is pretty widely used is orange, I actually use orange in some of my websites. And I use it because it is it’s really good for to appear friendly and youthful. And it’s it’s energetic like red, but it’s less aggressive than red. And so you think of a beautiful sunset or a bowl of citrus oranges. If I remember correctly, the color orange is actually named after the fruit orange, which is an interesting thing. But anyway, so orange is invigorating, it’s playful, and it’s really good for brands that do want to appear friendly and youthful. So if you think of brands that use it, think Nickelodeon. And there are other brands that use it that aren’t necessarily friendly and useful like Home Depot. But it’s that’s one of the the psychological aspects of it is that it does make you feel friendly. And with with Home Depot, they want to evoke the the emotion of hey, this is a friendly store that I can go in and get all my home improvement needs taken care of.
Chrissy Rey 8:39
The next color I want to talk about is black and a lot of brands use black for their logos and for a lot of their brand names. So think Chanel, Adidas, Nike, they all use black pretty effectively. It’s the ultimate classic, it’s elegant, it’s sophisticated, it’s timeless, and it can add drama and contrast but you do need to be careful not to overdo it. So you don’t necessarily want everything to be black because it can make that feel heavy or very serious or just very dark and sort of tired. So think about what you if you if you think of a black screen, what do you think of so that’s that’s what Black does.
Chrissy Rey 9:22
Another color that you want to think about is white and white is the blank canvas of colors. When it comes to screen colors, white is the presence of all colors. Black is the absence of all colors. White is the presence of all colors at one time. And White is clean. It’s pure, it gives all of the other colors space to shine. And it’s used to give breathing room and a sense of cleanliness to your website. So you might have heard the term white space it’s it’s pretty important. But white is like the quiet person in the room who makes everyone else look good. And brands like Tesla and Coca Cola, use white in combination with other colors for their logos. So if you think of Coca Cola in particular, they use red, a red background with the white for their brand or black for their brand. So that’s a good example of white.
Chrissy Rey 10:20
Now, there are many other colors to choose from, those are sort of the the primary ones and the secondary colors there, I think I covered all of them. But these colors should get you started. So there’s some variations of these colors. And, and really, the best thing to do is think about, how does the color that you’re thinking of make you feel?
Chrissy Rey 10:40
How does it make your target audience feel, and really your target audience is what’s most important. So you need to think about that, importantly, and when you’re picking your colors that are going to work best for your brand. And ultimately, for your website, there are a lot of things to consider, but how it makes your audience feel is one of the most importance. So you want to if you want your audience to feel clean and, and pure and and you want other colors to sort of shine their way through, then white might be a good one. If you want them to feel want them to feel like your website is friendly, youthful fun, then orange might be a good color for you. If you want to evoke feelings of femininity pink might be a good color. So these are just some things to think about. Because again, it is all about your audience, your your preferences do matter, but your audience’s preferences are what matter the most in that.
Chrissy Rey 11:38
So another thing to think about when it comes to selecting the colors that are going to work for your brand and your website is what personality, what vibe Are you going for with your brand. So again, if if you want to have a fun and playful brand, you might use orange. If you want to have a happy and cheerful brand you might want to use yellow. If you want to want to have eco friendly brand, you might want to use green. So your colors should reflect that. So not just how they make your audience feel. But how what kind of personality do you want to give to the brand?
Chrissy Rey 12:15
Now as for your audience, who are you talking to? So this is something to also think about, because different demographics might have different reactions to colors. So for example, younger audiences might be drawn to brighter and more vibrant colors. Well, an older demographic might prefer something a little bit more subdued. So something to keep in mind there. And then also colors and I did touch on this a little bit in the beginning, colors can symbolize different things in different cultures. So for example, in some cultures, White can symbolize purity and innocence. So if you think of wedding dresses and the like, but in other cultures White is the color of mourning, M-O-U-R-I-N-G and its associated with funerals, so it’s it may be more of a sad color than a pure and innocent color.
Chrissy Rey 13:09
Now there are more things to think about than just those two. So that’s this is a good place to start. So again, the audience is really a really important aspect and then the personality of your brand. Those are two important things.
Chrissy Rey 13:22
So for right now, I want you to pick one color as your starting point, and go from there. And I don’t want to overwhelm you in a single episode. So I will talk about how to pick color combinations or color schemes in the next episode when I color when I cover color theory.
Chrissy Rey 13:41
So stay tuned for the next episode, come back and listen to that so that you can get a little bit more on taking that primary color that you pick and I don’t actually it’s not primary because primary is a specific type of color but main color the the main color of your color scheme or color palette, and come back and listen to the episode about color theory.
Chrissy Rey 14:03
That’s it for now. I hope you found this introduction to Color Psychology helpful. If you did, and I hope you did, please leave a review, share this episode with someone who could benefit from it. And until next time, I’m Chrissy Rey and this is Website Success. Thanks for tuning in.