A practical way to pick brand colours that look good together, work on screens and print, and stay readable — even if you've never studied colour theory.
Updated
Most small brands don't choose a colour palette — they drift into one. A colour from the logo, a different shade in last month's poster, whatever the template came with this week. The result is a feed that doesn't look like it belongs to anyone.
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A palette fixes that. It doesn't need to be clever; it needs to be decided, written down, and used every time. Here's a way to build one in an afternoon, without a design background.
Your favourite colour is a bad starting point. A better one is three words for how your brand should feel to the person seeing it. For example:
Those words point you towards families of colour: warm and homely suggests soft oranges, creams and browns; calm and trustworthy suggests blues and greens with plenty of white; playful suggests saturated, contrasting colours.
Colour meanings aren't universal, though. Red is auspicious and festive for many Indian audiences, but in other contexts it signals urgency or discounts. Look at what your customers are used to — and at your competitors.
Open the Instagram profiles of five competitors and note their main colours. If four of them use blue, a blue brand will blend in. You don't have to be wildly different; moving to teal, or pairing the expected blue with an unexpected warm accent, is often enough to be recognisable.
This is the colour people should associate with you — the one on your logo, your key buttons, your highlights. Choose a colour that is:
Save it as a HEX code (like #2563EB). From now on, that exact code is your colour — not "a blue".
Now add the supporting cast. A simple, reliable structure:
| Role | What it's for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Main | Logo, key highlights, buttons | A strong blue |
| Supporting | Backgrounds, illustrations, secondary graphics | A softer related colour |
| Accent | Small things you want noticed: prices, badges, "new" | A contrasting warm colour |
| Dark neutral | Text, dark backgrounds | Near-black navy or charcoal |
| Light neutral | Page and post backgrounds | Off-white or light grey |
If you're not sure what goes with your main colour, a palette generator helps. In our colour palette generator you can lock your main colour and generate supporting colours around it using a harmony — analogous for calm, complementary for contrast, triadic for playful. Press space until something clicks.
Tip: Your neutrals don't have to be pure black and white. A dark navy instead of black, or a warm off-white instead of white, makes the whole palette feel more considered.
A palette on its own doesn't tell you how much of each colour to use. The 60-30-10 rule is a useful starting point:
The accent works because it's rare. If everything is highlighted, nothing is.
Colours that look beautiful side by side can fail when one is used as text on the other. Light grey text on white, or white text on a pale yellow, is hard to read — especially on a phone in sunlight.
For text, aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (3:1 for large headlines). Paste your text and background colours into the colour contrast checker; if a pair fails, it suggests the nearest shade that passes, so your colour stays recognisable.
Before you commit, make three real things with your palette: an Instagram post, a Story and a simple flyer. You'll quickly notice problems a swatch doesn't show — an accent that's too loud, a supporting colour that disappears on photos, a dark neutral that looks muddy in print.
Adjust, then write the final HEX codes down somewhere everyone who makes content for you can find them.
A palette only works if it's used. A few habits that help:
Once your colours are settled, the next step is type — see our guide to pairing fonts for social media.
Five is a good number: a main colour, one or two supporting colours, and a dark and light neutral. Fewer is fine; more usually makes designs look inconsistent.
A guide for balancing colours: about 60% of a design in a dominant colour (often a neutral), 30% in a secondary colour, and 10% in an accent used for what you want noticed, like a button or price.
Not universally. Associations depend on culture and context — red is lucky and festive in much of India, but also means “sale” or “danger” elsewhere. Look at what your audience and competitors use rather than relying on a colour-meaning chart.
Check the contrast ratio. Normal text needs at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text 3:1. A contrast checker tells you instantly and can suggest a darker or lighter shade that passes.
