When clients ask me to "make it more colourful" or "can we try a blue version," I know we need to have a conversation before we open the colour picker. Colour is one of the most powerful tools in visual design — and one of the most misunderstood.
Most people treat colour as decoration. Something to make a design look nice, feel warm, stand out on the page. But colour does much more than that. It communicates trust, urgency, friendliness, luxury, danger. It tells a story before anyone reads a single word.
"The right colour palette isn't beautiful — it's accurate."
Colour carries meaning before you assign it
Colours arrive with pre-existing associations. Some are cultural (white means purity in Western contexts, mourning in some Eastern ones). Some are psychological (red increases heart rate, blue creates calm). Some are industry-specific (green for health and sustainability, black for luxury).
Before choosing a colour, ask: what does this colour already mean to the people who will see it? You're not working from a blank slate — you're working with inherited associations, and you can use them or fight them. But you can't ignore them.
The three roles of colour in a brand system
1. Primary colour — your identity
This is the colour people associate with your brand. It should be distinct within your category (not the same blue as every other tech company), but not so unusual that it creates friction. Your primary colour does the heavy lifting of recognition.
2. Supporting palette — your range of expression
One colour isn't enough for a full design system. Supporting colours give you flexibility — for backgrounds, tags, states, data visualisation. The key is harmony: supporting colours should feel like they belong together, not like they were chosen on different days.
3. Functional colours — your system language
Error red, success green, warning amber — these colours aren't about brand expression, they're about communication clarity. They need to follow convention because users already know what they mean. Don't try to be creative here.
A simple test for your colour palette
Before finalising a palette, run it through these checks:
- Contrast: Does text pass WCAG AA accessibility standards against your backgrounds?
- Colour blindness: Does your UI still work when viewed in greyscale or by someone with deuteranopia?
- Context: How does the palette look at small sizes, on dark backgrounds, in print?
- Meaning alignment: Does each colour communicate what you intend, given your industry and audience?
When "I just like it" isn't good enough
Aesthetic preference is real and valid. But in professional design, colour choices need to be defensible — not just to you, but to your client, their marketing team, their developers, and ultimately their users.
When I present a colour direction, I don't say "I think this looks nice." I say: "This colour is associated with trust in financial contexts, it differentiates you from your two main competitors who both use blue, and it passes accessibility standards at all required contrast levels."
That's what makes a colour choice a design decision rather than a guess.
