Color Psychology in Design

What colors should be used when and where, according to psychology

Color Meanings: Red

Red is positively associated with love, passion, confidence, and action. It's negatively associated with war, danger, anger, and aggression.

Recommended use: For accents, highlighting key elements, best used sparingly.

Color Meanings: Orange

Orange is positively associated with creativity, health, energy, and tropics. It's negatively associated with hyperactivity and superficiality.

Recommended use: For brands that want to feel energetic/energizing and approachable.

Color Meanings: Yellow

Yellow is positively associated with optimism, happiness, and cheerfulness. It's negatively associated with criticism, caution, and cowardice.

Recommended use: For brands that target younger audiences or playful products.

Color Meanings: Green

Green is positively associated with growth, fertility, nature, harmony, balance, and health. It's negatively associated with envy and greed.

Recommended use: For brands that are geared towards health, wellness, and sustainability.

Color Meanings: Blue

Blue is positively associated with loyalty, trust, responsible, and peaceful. It's negatively associated with sadness and distance.

Recommended use: Blue is versatile, and works well for brands in education, calming, and corporate/tech branding.

Color Meanings: Purple

Purple is positively associated with creativity, luxury, imagination, wisdom, and mystery. It's not particulary negatively associated with anything.

Recommended use: For premium, luxurious, and creative branding.

Color Meanings: Pink

Pink is positively associated with softness, compassion, and playfulness. It's negatively associated with childishness, artificial, and superficial.

Recommended use: For fashion, lifestyle, and youthful branding.

Color Meanings: White

White is positively associated with goodness, cleanliness, peace, and purity. It's negatively associated with sterility, medicine, and dullness/blandness.

Recommended use: Useful as a canvas color to allow other colors to shine; Minimalism.

Color Meanings: Brown

Brown is positively associated with security, warmth, friendly, and earthy. It's negatively associated with barren, dull, and dirty.

Recommended use: To evoke emotions of stability, security, and used well as a background.

Color Meanings: Gray

Pink is positively associated with professionalism, sophistication, and formal. It's negatively associated with dullness, emptiness, and cold.

Recommended use: For clean and minimal branding, type, etc.

Color Meanings: Black

Pink is positively associated with elegance, mystery, wealth, authority, and formality. It's negatively associated with death, evil, secretive, and the unknown.

Recommended use: As a default and balancing color.