If you want your business signage to inspire and affect your audience, you need to think beyond the words and the images. In branding and advertising color is everything.

Ask yourself what you want your audience to feel when they view your signs or ad. Believe it or not, color has an incredible and long-lasting effect on how the viewer reacts to visuals. Big name brands and successful companies understand the vital role of color, and they strategize their marketing and signage carefully. If you’re like most businesses, you could probably spend a little more time considering the color effect your designs and signs have on your prospects and customers.

Below is a list of some of the most common colors and the effect they have on consumers.

Red

Red is an emotionally intense color that’s often used to convey excitement or extreme emotions Studies show that food companies successfully utilize red in their store signage and décor because it encourages appetite and enhances metabolism.

In conjunction with the emotional response, red is highly visible and helps bring text and images to the foreground. We suggest using it as an accent on your business signage to attract attention to your key messages.

Yellow

Most people associate yellow with joy, happiness, and energy. It arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. It is also a great attention getter, but use it sparingly, because too much yellow can have a disturbing effect on your audience.

Use it to direct your viewers focus to the text and to inspire happy feelings.

Orange

Orange propels people to feel energetic. It combines the intensity of red and the happiness of yellow, still offering the same the same attention grabbing factor but with a more toned down element. Orange represents enthusiasm, creativity, and success.

Most people’s physical response to orange is increased oxygen to the brain, invigoration and mental stimulation. We suggest using orange in your design if you want to convey excitement and strength without too much passion or overbearance.

Green

Commonly used to represent nature, green also symbolizes growth, harmony, and freshness. Green invokes feelings of security and health as well as thoughts of financial security and monetary success. It is the most pleasant color to look at, and even improves vision.

If you want your brand to exude health and calm, use green in your signage. Organic food brands, fitness centers and financial companies find green to be one of the most effective marketing colors.

Blue

Blue symbolizes trust, confidence, and intelligence. It produces calm feelings and even slows down metabolism. This should be taken into account when promoting food because the color blue is actually an appetite suppressant. It is considered a strong masculine color, and is effective in portraying intelligence and cleanliness.

If you need help with design or branding let us know, we’d love to help.