Choosing Restaurant Brand Colors: Getting Started

Restaurant brand colors make a big impact on how your restaurant is perceived. Colors evoke strong emotions, which means that colors are a great way to make your brand memorable and attractive to customers.

However, we know that picking out restaurant brand colors is not easy to do. There's an infinite amount of colors to choose from. Figuring out how many colors to have, how to make them work together and then how to incorporate them into your branding takes a lot of strategy. Especially if you're keeping color psychology at the top of your mind the whole time!

Branding experts sort this stuff out all the time, so let us show you the right way around the color wheel. Here's some of our strategy for the process in case you want to take a stab at picking out your restaurant brand colors yourself.

Restaurant Brand Colors: Do Your Color Research

Color is a powerful communication tool. It can incite action, impact mood and heighten emotions. Color shows the viewer what to feel and hints at what they should do.

Research shows that 60% of people decide whether or not they are attracted to a message or a brand based only on color. That's more than half!

Brand colors can affect the visibility of your brand and reinforce brand recognition. Studies show that brand recognition can be improved by up to 80% through color. This is great news for your business. You can harness the attention, memory and emotion of your consumer through a basic understanding of color psychology.

Restaurant Brand Colors: Make it a Combo

If you're going to use more than one color in your branding, make sure to consider the effects of your combinations. Clever color combinations will help reinforce your brand personality. Colors have to play nice!

Here are some technical terms you should be familiar with before choosing a set of restaurant brand colors:

Monochromatic Color Palettes: These are sets of colors that are all tints and shades of the same color. Monochromatic palettes can be boring, but can still definitely lend themselves to your message. Sometimes you can't beat good old black and white.

Analogous Color Palettes: Any two colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel.

Complementary Colors: These are two colors that sit across from each other on the color wheel.

Organize Your Colors

Our restaurant brand color experts recommend picking two to six colors for your brand. Provide variety by combining both lighter and darker tones and consider how the colors will be used throughout your branding.

Ideally, you'll want to pick a small set of main brand colors and a couple of supporting brand colors.

Then, add in a neutral color (we choose a grey or black often) that can be used in underlying elements like body copy.

Once you select your colors, make sure you have the color codes for CMYK, RGB, and Web to keep the colors consistent anywhere you use them.

If you need some more help strategically selecting restaurant brand colors that will represent you well and evoke the right emotions, reach out to the crew at Nice Branding Agency! We'd love to help.