Stop, that’s too many brand colours
- 6 days ago
- 9 min read
Brand colours become less effective when you’re using more than you can count with the fingers on one hand.
If you take away nothing else from this article other than this one sentence, you’ll likely be better placed to have more effective branding.
So here’s the TL;DR sentence:
Pick 1-3 brand colours AT MOST for your branding.
Alright, too-da-loo if that’s all you need to hear.
Otherwise, if you wanna stick around a little longer, here’s why I continue to shout this branding tip from the rooftops. Because it’s the same main reason that I suggest keeping your brand values limited to no more than 3, targeting no more than 3 markets, or having no more than 3 key messages.
It makes your branding simpler.
Simpler for you and your team. Simpler for your audience and customers.
The whole idea being my ‘better branding’ mantra that you might have noticed I talk about a lot, is not about your branding looking or sounding sexier…I’m not that vain.
And it’s definitely not about being more complex so that it makes your brand seem more legit because you have all this information, a handful of strategies, and a massive toolbox of identity tools like 10 different logo variations and 12 brand colours, and 8 different typefaces. As that sounds like a complete nightmare to manage, let alone give any potential customer the chance to recognise and remember your brand.
So ‘better branding’ is about effective branding and part of that requires restraint. The restraint to realise what not to do as much as what to do. To pick a lane that competitors aren’t in. And to use one tool rather than 10 to achieve the outcome you’re aiming for. Though I recognise one tool can be quite limiting, which is why I say 1-3 at most and this approach wholly applies to brand colour choices.
Now here are some observations I've seen in various markets and then some practical tips for how you can choose your brand colours so that you too can have better branding for better business success.
The Professionals - Real estate agency
In Australia there are a number of nationally present real estate franchise agencies that dot all over the country. One of which is Professionals. However, to get a little technical in case they pull me up on this point, Professionals are a little different as they are more of an independent member-owned, non-for-profit network, so they’re up against the big dogs but they kind of are one at the same time in terms of a nationally recognised brand. Anyhoo, they've been around since 1976 and in that time they’ve had a few rebrands including two branding looks that used quite the pinwheel of colours as you can see below.
However, just last year in 2025, they reshaped the identity, which in my opinion, especially as I used to rent through one of their agencies, their brand now looks as ‘professional’ as the name suggests, and more than likely aligns with a realignment internally within their teams and how they serve their customers. I can’t say exactly as I wasn’t part of their rebranding, but it seems to now look and sound the part at least on the facade.
Now I said at the start that ‘better branding’ is not about looking or sounding sexier. Sure it helps, but it’s more so about effectiveness. And interestingly for Professionals, or at least the team behind the rebrand, they might have drawn inspiration from the branding that was first used. As they seem to have gone back to the red and black colours with a slight tweak to the hues. This is effective branding. Not because they’ve drawn inspiration from the inception point of their brand, but by using restraint in selecting a much more minimal colour palette that mainly heroes the red as a distinct accent colour as an attribute of the brand. It’s a wise move, and while there are only so many colours in the spectrum to choose from, the combo of this shale grey and a kind of lighter hue red, differ enough from the competition.
Now you might say, well having the multiple colour brand was different from any other agency. And to that I would agree 100% with you. However, there’s a caveat to this kind of distinctiveness and that is that it shouldn’t come at the expense of simplicity. Which in their context is how they’d use those colours in their branding in day-to-day usage.
I’m not saying having branding with multiple colours can’t be done, but if you have a business that doesn’t have a dedicated creative team of designers managing every touchpoint, it becomes a struggle for non-designer types (aka. the vast majority of people) to manage that task of using your brand effectively without cocking it up. I say that jovially as I don’t expect anyone to just be a designer as well as what they specialise in. But if I can be serious, if you gave someone 10 tools to figure out not only how to use them but also how to fix a car engine. It’s the wildest comparison I could give to it being somewhat similar to me giving your team 10 colours to work with and design a social media post or PowerPoint presentation yourselves when you’ve never made one before and expect you to make it look schmick, let alone ‘on-brand’ in a cohesive manner.
Success leaves clues in the hues
I know it’s easy to just say, look at what the big brands are doing and take a leaf out of their book. But at the same time, I also wouldn’t suggest you try and emulate many of these successful brands either.
Take Google, eBay, NBC, or Slack. These brands, use quite a number of colours in their logos in particular but also in their branding more broadly with no stand out colour in particular like an Hermes orange or colour duo like IKEA’s yellow and navy blue. Of course these brands are BIG brands and they succeed just fine with so many colours in their branding tool belt. But the difference here is that they are BIG. They have a huge market presence and teams upon teams, including agencies that manage their brand touchpoints and marketing. So these are the kinds of brands for particular reasons like brand colour choice, that I wouldn’t suggest emulating, as you want to give your brand the best shot at standing out and being remembered easily.
Instead, I’d look to the brands that do use minimal colour palettes. Be it the one colour brands like Tiffany & Co that even trademarked their single robin’s egg blue colour, Cadbury with their iconic purple, and Starbucks with their green. Or two colour brands like McDonald’s with their yellow and red, FedEx with their purple and orange, or here in Australia our leading hardware store, Bunnings that use dark green and red.
These are the brands that catch our eyes because they use a limited number of colours to get our attention and code that far more easily into our brains as consumers to create these associations between what their brand represents and that colour that identifies them. It’s the same thing we do with abstract logo symbols without even needing to read the name of the brand. But it’s colour that gets our attention first.
So picture a scenario like this. You’re in a crowded multi-level shopping mall and you’re looking out at all the shops as you travel up or down escalators in the void within the middle of this mall.
I could bet you $10 that the first one your eyes get drawn to is the store that uses one distinct colour. Especially a bright one. If there’s a food court it could very well be McDonalds’ yellow golden arches logo. If the mall has a supermarket, it could very well be one of them, like Coles (that use red) or Woolworths (that use green) here in Australia. Or if there are a plethora of clothing stores, I’d bet that if there is a UNIQLO you’d spot their bright red rectangle logo, or an orange Nike swoosh logo above each of their stores.
The point here is that effective colour choice can be measured by how easy it gets attention as colour is the first thing we recognise almost instantly, with emotional responses some say as fast as 0.01 of a second. But also that it becomes easier to quickly associate with that brand, and later think of and remember. Because the more information we need to process, the less likely it is to be stored and recalled.
Practical tips for colour choice
1. 1-3 Colours at most
I gave this tip at the start because it’s the basis for any ‘better branding’ decision. It’s not to say you can’t have more as you can have shades of your main colours and secondary colours that are used sparingly here and there. The point is to lean into 1-3 main brand colours that show up in every touchpoint possible. The less the better. For my own brand it’s pink with black and white if you can even count those two, as I see them more as supplementary or secondary colours. This is the same for one of my clients too, Raw C, that use a bright teal colour for their coconut water, milks and oils product brand.
2. Take a pinch of salt when it comes to colour theory
If you think back to your school days as a kid and you learnt the basic, “red means love or intensity”, or “green means wealth or nature”, or “blue means calm or authority”. These dichotomies alone should heed a warning to only take the reasons for choosing a colour based on intrinsic feelings with a pinch of salt. I’d rather you pick a specific colour because you simply love it and would be happy to use it every day rather than picking it because it’s supposed to mean something.
3. Pick a colour you’d be happy to wear every day
No joke with this one, as you’re going to live and breath your brand. You’re going to see it 1000x more than your customers ever will, so you’ve got to be happy to see them every day and proud to wear them.
4. Sometimes you’ve gotta pick what is appropriate
Certain industries or products and services require a certain level of sensibility when it comes to how a brand presents itself. I see this especially when it requires a duty of care and high levels of trust, like health, security and even death in industries like funeral services. You can’t be showing up with loud crazy colours. They’ve got to hit the right emotional note to be recognised as a brand that ‘gets it’ when it comes to showing up appropriately. Of course you can stand out, but here you only need to stand out in terms of not looking like the competition.
5. Make sure they don’t clash on top of one another
Take it from me, as this tip is exactly why I went from two colours, a saturated navy blue and pink, and ditching the blue to just have pink. They competed for attention as very bright colours but more so it was because they didn’t work on top of one another, especially for text. As it made it hard to read both pink text on navy blue and navy blue text on pink. So my tip is to make sure that the colours you do pick will work well together and on top of each other. Which might mean for your brand that you end up picking one signature accent colour that stands out over the top of your 1-2 other colours and any secondary colours you choose.
6. Pick the colours your competition isn’t
This is the final one and most basic starting point I’d actually recommend you think of right after sticking to a criteria of only 1-3 colours at most. And that is to simply look at your direct competitors and pick the colour or colours they aren’t using. If you’re thinking you’re going to potentially expand into different markets, then of course be mindful of other competitors you could likely cause friction with if you had the same colours. But this is the most important and simplest starting point for any colour decision making and it’s exactly where I start. Because there’s no point picking one and then end up seeing a competitor use it and go back to the drawing board so as not to be mistaken for their brand…Unless that's your intention so that people mistake their brand for yours. But I’m not that cunning, nor do I see that as an effective decision that creates a successful brand.
Brand colours are an influential part of how your brand is perceived, remembered well and recognised. It can be somewhat of an art in itself to pick the colours that align with your brand and your target market. But the simpler the colours you use, the easier for everyone they will be to use and recognise your brand. It’s all about better branding for better business success and colour can make a big difference in that success. So give your brand a shot at better branding.
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