How to choose your colour palette as a client

Colours play a vital role when it comes to designing and branding. You want to choose the correct colours for what your company stands for, as well as the industry it serves in. There are many different ways you can create a colour palette. Below is a list of different ways you can choose the correct colour harmonies:

Monochromatic Complementary

Compound Split Complementary

Triad Square

The colour wheel is expanding in complexity and variety. Now, choosing the appropriate colour combination can be a difficult challenge. By establishing particular techniques by choosing colours based on where they fall on the colour wheel, colour harmonies can help simplify this effort. These colour algorithms can help to select the perfect colour palette.

Hues

A hue is a solid colour, that has not been mixed with anything else, e.g. blue, red, green. Hues emit different emotions and associations, choosing the correct colours for your design is key. You will notice that one half of the wheel shows warm colours and the other half shows cool colours.

The use of colour can influence how your design is perceived - whether it comes across as dull, energising, harmonising, inspiring, depressing, or worn out. As there are so many colour options, it can seem overwhelming to choose from, but, with a few tips, you can reduce them to just one.

Have you noticed a lot of fast food companies use red in their main logo? For example, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King. Studies suggest this is because red increases appetite.

Red is a very strong colour and can provoke anger, so it should be used accordingly. It can also increase appetite.

Orange is a very enthaustic colour, with hints of red and yellow, orange can be used for in a variety of different designs.

Yellow is seen as an enthusiastic, happy colour. While it can be hard to read yellow font, while used correctly it can help compliment other colours.

Green is Wildely associated with nature and growth. It celebrates success within companies, a lot of financial companies will use Green in their designs.

Cyan is a calming colour that can be used to express information.

Blue is one of the most used colours in companies worldwide. If it is not used in a logo, it is often used as a background colour as people find it easy to read on a blue background.

Purple is a bit warmer than blue and is often associated with sophistication and is widely used in the hospitality industry.

Pink is vibrant and romantic.

Creating your palette

To start creating your palette, you need to either know the colours you already want to use, or gather inspiration from other sources. One of the best ways to start creating a palette is to choose one colour and then a colour that compliments this. If you look at colour theory and the colour wheel, you’ll be able to see what colours contrast well.

For example if you wanted your main colour focus to be purple, the colour that compliments this is yellow/green. Or if you want red, then your design could also show highlights of blue.

But... you don’t have to choose two colours. As shown on the colour harmony wheels above, you can chose one main hue and then more neutral tones helping the hue to really pop. For example, one bright hue and then grey and lighter tones of the same hue can really make that one colour stand out.

Shades, hints and tones

To help choose secondary, tertiary etc colours, with the main colour you have decided on, you can now play around with its shades, tints and tones.

Tint

By adding tint, it will lighten the colour as you are adding white to the colour. The more tint you add, the lighter the colour will become.

Shade

When you add shade to a colour, you are adding black. This is to darken the colour down, to make a deeper richer colour.

Tone

A tone is when an artist adds grey to a colour. Adding grey to a colour can really help compliment the original hue with more calming tones.

After experimenting with the hue, you may begin to compose your palette. Personally, I'd limit the number of "colours" to no more than five; sometimes, less is more. Out of the hues, tints, shades, and tones you have produced/selected, pick your top five "colours." You can experiment with two or three different hues and their tints, tones, and shades to produce colour palettes with a larger variety of colours. They don't all have to come from the same hue.

Here is a palette created from the hue blue, then by adding shades, tints and tones to this hue (see above), I have been able to come up with a strong palette.