Choose a Color Palette You Can Keep

A palette is a short list of colors you agree to use everywhere. Short is the important word. This step gets you to four or five colors you can keep for years.

Photo: “Paint swatches” by Clean Wal-Mart, CC BY 2.0.

Start from the board

Open your moodboard from step 5 and squint. Two or three colors will dominate. Those are your candidates, already tested against your three words.

Pick them with an eyedropper tool (every design app has one, and so do free browser extensions) and write down the hex code of each, the six characters that start with #. From now on a color is a code. “Dark blue” is a guess.

The structure

• One main color. It covers most of the surface: backgrounds, big areas. It is the color people will remember you by.
• One support color. It sits next to the main one comfortably. Often lighter or darker, good for text and second surfaces.
• One accent. Used in small amounts, for one detail per piece.
• Two neutrals. A near black and a near white, for text and breathing room.

The rough proportion of 60, 30 and 10 percent is a classic design rule of thumb. There is no need to measure it. Just avoid using all colors in equal amounts, which is how things start to look like a flag.

Check the pairs

Put your text color on your background color and read it on a phone, outdoors, at low brightness. If it is hard to read, change one of the two. Contrast checkers online will give you a number, but your eyes on a real phone are the honest test.

A palette works when you can describe it from memory and someone else could repeat it.

Then live with the limit

The palette will feel too small in the second week. That feeling is the palette working. Recognition comes from the same few colors showing up again and again, well before anyone reads your name.

Do this now

Write your five hex codes in your notes with a one-word role next to each: main, support, accent, dark, light. Make one test image, a square with your name on it, using only those five.

If you want a palette built with you and tested on real pieces, it is part of our identity work.