How many colours should my brand's logo use?

45% of brands get recognised by their colour

That sits just beneath the logo (75%) and visual style (60%) and quite a bit above tone of voice (25%).

So choosing the right colour mix is really important if you want to get recognised quickly.

But, maybe mix isn't the right word. Swap it for palette. Choosing a colour palette or color palette, if you're American, is really important.

We've seen articles suggesting picking up to 10 colours. If you are picking 10 colours for your logo, we suggest taking a step back, and questioning if 10 colours amplifies your message, or alters it?

Across the whole brand identity, you might approach 10, but really, that's someone taking a wild stab in the dark and not doing any research into what branding agencies actually do.

Case in point, Starbucks, we counted 32 colours in their vast brand palette. If you look through the Starbucks brand guidelines and navigate to colors, you'll see they have a core set of colours, all the greens, with some additional neutrals. But then depending on the season, they have a range of seasonal colours and how they use them.

Our point is, they have a wide range of colours, but they are still distinctively green and white. That's the colours on signage, across their website.

There's no one size fits all colour palette

Each brand, comes with it's own set of unique characteristics we look to amplify, or even mute with colour choice.

So unless you are choosing colours daily and fully understand the psychology of colours, it can be incredibly hard to pick colours.

A few examples

• Brand's with purpose at heart have to be very careful to not be seen to be purpose-washing or green-washing - check out Zero Co and Meatable for great examples.
• New brands that enter the market will often gravitate to conventional colours that are synonymous with their industry. If they are in healthcare, they go for the medical aqua blue. If they're a daycare, they hit the bold and vibrant colours like red yellow and blue.

What colours should I pick and how many do I need?

You're better to read our blog post, how to choose your brand colours first as we constantly learn new things and actively update all our posts to reflect the latest information we have.

Let's move on to how many colours do you need.

Start out with two colours for your core brand, these can reflect the message you sell.

Then add 1-2 secondary colours, think of these as accent colours that are used across promotional material and website.

Finally, don't just select black and white as your neutral colours. You could do – black, navy, dark grey, deep green, dark purple, brown. Or pick lighter colours like – white, cream, light grey, and any other pastels colours you can dream of.

Just make sure that the combination of colours is chosen with accessibility in mind.

So now you know how many colours you need, you need to take into consideration the psychology behind using them, warm and cool colours, monochromatic, complimentary. A colour like a bright yellow is considered a comforting colour, while orange is striking and eager for attention. Orange and reds are used heavily in the food manufacturing and fast food industries. Blue triggers calm feelings, so a lot of medical businesses use it. Facebook uses blue to keep people calm and make sure they are comfortable lingering on the platform. Greens organic and environmental, but also used in banking and insurance. Black, white, grey and deep purple have that regal, high-end feel to them.

You need to match the colours to the vibe that you're creating.