What is colour psychology?
Colour psychology is a study of the relationship between human behaviours and colours. Colours can cause certain emotions in people, perceptions that are not obvious, like a taste of food and, it can change their daily mood, like wearing a bright colour. As colour psychology can affect people’s minds, it is widely used in marketing and branding. Customers’ emotions and perceptions toward goods and services will likely change. Therefore, colour works importantly in many brands.
An example of this is, red and yellow can stimulate hunger as many fast-food brands such as “Burger King,” “McDonald’s,” and “Wendy’s” use red and yellow as the prime colour of their logos. Also, research shows that blue gives people an impression of trustworthy, dependable, and wholesome. From this characteristic of blue, a lot of financial industry companies like “Allstate,” “JP Morgan,” and “American Express.” Many big companies use colour psychology for their logo to grab more people’s attention, and studies by experts explain that colour psychology mentally affects humans.
The Meaning of Different Colours
1.Red
-Attracts most attention: strong emotions (ie. love, passion, anger)
-Signifies strength, power, courage, and danger
-Energies, excites and motivates people to act
-Warm and positive usually associated with most physical needs
2. Orange
-Evokes encouragement, optimism, and self-confidence (extrovert)
-Signifies warmth and happiness, the combination of physical energy of red and cheerfulness of yellow
-Inspires courage, enthusiasm, rejuvenation, and vitality
-More feminine energy and the energy of creation
3. Yellow
-Creative (ie. colour of post-it notes and legal pads is yellow)
-Results in uplifting and illuminating characteristics as it is the lightest hue of the spectrum
-Creates a sense of cheerfulness and playfulness, brightening people’s spirits
-However, too much yellow can cause anxiety, nervousness, apprehension etc.
4. Green
-Symbolize nature => harmony, healing, and stability
-Represents security and self-reliance
-Darker green usually relates to money, wealth and prestige
-Lighter green usually relates to rebirth, growth, and freshness
-In business, green gives the impression of health and healing, safe, organic, etc.
5. Blue
-Color of trust, serenity, and peace
-Opposite effect on the brain than red=> calming, reducing tension and fear
-In business, it is normally used as uniforms (for example, airlines have blue uniforms)
-Relates to trust, honesty, maturity, and dependability
6. Purple
-Creative, immature, and impractical
-Symbolizes imagination and spirituality
-Implies wealth, and royalty as well as, fantasy, and creativity
-In business, it is often used to represent a high-quality or superior product or premium service
