How to Choose Brand Colors

By Melon Cut ·

How to choose brand colors is a question with a practical answer. Forget the chart of what each hue supposedly means. Instead, ask what the colors must do: stand out in a crowded feed, stay readable as text, and still look like you on a shop sign, a website and a phone screen.

Start from the competition, not from taste

Look at five businesses your customers also look at. Which colors do they all share? If every café nearby is brown and cream, a deep teal will be seen at once. If every law firm is navy, a slightly unusual dark green may separate you without looking unserious. You do not need to be loud, only distinguishable.

Pick one main color

Your main color is the one people should remember. Choose it for how it behaves, not just how it looks on a swatch:

  • Does it still look good on a phone at low brightness?
  • Can white text sit on it, or does it need dark text?
  • Does it print close to the way it looks on screen?

Test it large and small. Many colors that look fine as a big block become muddy as a thin line.

Add support colors

Most brands need:

  • One or two accent colors for buttons, highlights and small details.
  • A dark neutral for text, rarely pure black.
  • A light neutral for backgrounds, rarely pure white.

Resist adding a fifth color. Each extra one weakens the others.

Check contrast before you commit

Place your text color over every background color you plan to use. If a pairing is hard to read for you, it will be harder for someone older or in bright sunlight. Write the safe pairings into your guidelines, for example "main color headlines on light neutral only".

Write each color down as a code

Names like "ocean" mean different things to different people. Record each color as a code and give it a job: "main", "accent", "text", "background". Add one line on proportion, such as "mostly light neutral, a little main color, accent only for buttons".

Test on real formats

Build one social post, one story and one link image in your palette. Check the story against its safe area so key elements are not covered by the app interface. The sizes are in Instagram Story Size Guide if you are not sure. Then look at them all at thumbnail size.

Prompts for exploring options

Suggest three color palettes for a surf school: each with a main color, one accent, a dark neutral and a light neutral. Describe the mood of each in one sentence.

I have a forest green main color. List supporting colors that stay readable with it and say which pairings to avoid for text.

Treat the results as a starting point, then check them yourself on screen.

Using your colors in Melon Cut

In Melon Cut Guidelines you record your palette with its codes and usage notes. Name the brand with @ in Melon Cut Design and the pictures follow your colors. Check each result, since a generated picture can drift slightly from an exact code. Related: How to Choose Brand Fonts.

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