Marketing design
16
min read
Choosing the right number of brand colors can make or break your visual identity. This guide breaks down how many colors you need, how to use them strategically, and includes real-world examples to help you build a palette that’s both cohesive and flexible. If you're building or refreshing a brand, this is the clarity you’ve been looking for.
Most people think branding starts with a logo. In reality, it starts long before, with a color. Before anyone reads your tagline or explores your product, color shapes how they feel about your brand. This fact is backed by marketing expert Neil Patel, who claims that color is responsible for 85% of the reason we buy.
That kind of influence makes choosing the right palette a must. Yet many brands struggle here, going overboard with chaotic rainbows or playing it too safe with forgettable schemes. And even a seemingly minor decision of the wrong color can lead to inconsistent visuals, lost recognition, and a missed emotional impact.
This guide is for those aiming to strike the right balance. We’ll answer a common question — how many colors should a brand have — and explain why that number matters. Along the way, you'll get insights from our design team, examples from brands, and practical advice you can apply to your own visual identity.
To spare you the long wait, here’s the short answer: a well-balanced brand usually works best with 3 to 5 carefully chosen colors. That’s the sweet spot for how many colors should be in a brand palette without overcomplicating things. Here’s how that typically breaks down:
At TodayMade, we also apply this approach in our projects. Take our work for Estate Logs, a real estate SaaS platform.
We chose a bold, royal blue (##355be3) as the brand’s core color to anchor the interface and reinforce a sense of trust and authority. It appears in key brand moments: the logo, buttons, and main images. That’s intentional, as primary colors should guide the user’s attention to high-impact actions.
To avoid visual monotony, we introduced supporting shades of blue — #2548c0, #355be2, and #8ba4fe. These aren’t used everywhere, but can be found in illustrations and tooltips. Secondary colors like these are best reserved for elements that deserve attention but aren’t the star of the show, like subheadings, modal dialogs, or secondary buttons.
For the background, we went with Ghost White, a soft, nearly-white tone that supports content without competing for attention. If in doubt, we advise choosing standard tones like white or light gray, especially when the focus is on textual information or conversion elements.
Finally, to create crisp contrast and anchor visual hierarchy, we paired the blues with classic black and white. This makes sure that key elements like typography and CTA buttons stand out clearly without relying on excess color.
So, yes, the ideal number hides behind intent. Choose your core, supporting, and background tones based on what they need to do. We’ve even noticed this concept echoed repeatedly in Reddit threads, where designers stress the same point.
Once you’ve selected your brand’s core colors, the next challenge is knowing how to apply them. For this, you can rely on the 60-30-10 rule, a simple visual formula to help you organize your palette across layouts in branding and UI as well.
Here’s how it works:
→ 60% of the visual space should be your dominant (primary) color. This is what sets the overall tone and emotional backdrop of your brand. On a website design, it might be reflected in your background, headers, or large UI sections.
→ 30% goes to your secondary color(s). These tones support your primary and provide variety, often showing up in sidebars, highlights, graphics, or secondary buttons. They prevent your graphic design from feeling flat or monotonous.
→ 10% is reserved for your accent color. This one’s crucial, as it’s what draws the eye. Think CTAs, alerts, or small but important elements. Because it’s used sparingly, it stands out naturally and guides user behavior.
When building a new layout, try blocking your wireframes in grayscale first. Then apply your primary, secondary, and accent colors using the 60-30-10 principle. You’ll spot imbalances immediately, and it helps you see if your CTA really pops or just blends in. This small step saves hours of rework for our TodayMade team.
Scroll through any corner of the internet, and you’ll find a lot of color palette brand guidelines. By reading through, you’ll see that some brands stick to a single bold hue. Others play with the entire spectrum. And both can work brilliantly, if done right.
A minimalist palette can build a focused identity. It feels confident, intentional, and clean. But try applying that same two-color approach to a complex digital product with dashboards, alerts, and role-based user flows, and things start to fall apart.
At TodayMade, we’ve worked on these extremes and can share some recommendations in this regard. The answer depends on your product’s complexity and how many colors in a brand palette it realistically needs to stay functional.
Some of the world’s most iconic brands rely on just one or two colors, and that’s no accident. When done well, minimalism becomes a superpower. World-renowned examples include Apple’s clean black-and-white aesthetic and Chanel’s timeless contrast of black and white.
These brands don’t need more color because their identity is rooted in precision. A single hue, when paired with great typography, layout, and tone, can be more than enough to build memorability.
But this kind of simplicity only works when it’s intentional. If you're going minimal, every color must carry weight. At TodayMade, we recommend using your primary color only in key spots where you want users to pause or act, like CTA buttons, nav bars, or hover states. Overusing it waters down its impact.
If you're thinking about logo design, the same logic applies. Simpler often wins. For clarity and versatility, most experts recommend no more than 2 to 3 shades when deciding how many colors should a logo have.
A minimalist palette also requires constraint elsewhere. Avoid adding random accent colors later just to “make it interesting.” Instead, rely on layout, space, and strong visual hierarchy to add depth.
Minimalist branding works best for:
But if your product is interactive, data-driven, or multi-layered, it might be time to expand. That’s where we’re headed next.
Minimalism doesn’t always scale. A lean color set can quickly hit its limits for products with layered functionality, dense content, or multiple user roles. That’s where larger palettes (sometimes six colors or more) step in as a necessity.
These are platforms like Google Workspace or Mastercard. Their ecosystems include dashboards, alerts, charts, and sub-brands, all requiring visual clarity and differentiation. One blue and an accent red won’t cut it here.
Sometimes, this approach is exactly what a website needs. When we worked on the 8k Academy landing page, we used Cotton Candy (#ffb8ff) and Pale Canary (#fdff8f) accents to guide the eye through a dense layout. Both colors are attention-grabbing, but work surprisingly well together against a soft Pearl Bush (#e9e3dd) background.
Community discussions back this approach up, too. On Reddit, freelance designers frequently mention that government platforms and large enterprise systems often rely on 10+ colors. Far from being confusing, this level of complexity actually enhances structure. Users don’t feel lost, they feel guided.
Expanding your brand style guide color palette works best for:
Just don’t confuse complexity with creativity. When working with a larger color system, treat every shade like a UI element — give it a purpose, test it in real context, and define its role early.
As designers, we don’t choose colors for brands just because they “look nice.” Every shade in the palette must play a role, and our job is to make sure each one knows exactly where it belongs, what it needs to do, and how loudly it should speak. To achieve that, here are some best practices.
No matter how many colors for a brand you end up using, your primary color should be the one people associate with your brand first. It appears in the logo, the top navigation bar, the main CTA buttons, and anywhere you need to make a statement.
Its role is simple: set the emotional tone and create immediate recognition.
As you browse different platforms, you’ll start to notice a pattern: most brands lean on a familiar range of colors or their close variations. That’s no accident. These associations run deep and often work on a subconscious level. For example:
Use it sparingly but consistently to highlight actions, guide attention, or unify components across pages.
Secondary colors fill in the gaps. These are used for subheadings, cards, tooltips, backgrounds, icons, secondary buttons, and anything that shouldn’t steal attention from the main story, but still needs visual clarity.
To make pairing easier, here are a few versatile secondary tones we often recommend:
Accent colors are visual triggers. They’re meant to jump out and draw the eye to something that matters (just like we did on the 8k Academy landing page). They’re especially useful in:
→ Notification systems and alerts (red = error, green = success)
→ Interactive states (sliders, switches, highlights)
→ Key data points (charts, badges, toggles)
→ Product tags or limited offers (e.g., “Beta”, “Trial”, “New”)
These tones often overlap emotionally with your primary color, but with sharper contrast and stronger urgency. They should be chosen based on the feeling they convey and the action you want users to take.
Here are a few examples that consistently work well:
The key is moderation. If everything’s screaming, nothing is heard. Accents work because they’re rare.
Neutral colors don’t scream for attention, but they make everything else possible. These hues structure space, improve legibility, and bring balance to bolder hues. You’ll see them used most often in backgrounds, layout containers, body text, icons, and separators between content blocks.
Here are a few simple tips for how to use them effectively:
Before turning to graphic design outsourcing for help or doing everything yourself, we advise stepping back and starting with a strategy.
Your color system needs to serve the actual context you’re designing for. That means considering your industry, your visual identity goals, and your communication needs from the very beginning. Getting this right early on makes future marketing efforts, like campaigns, social media, or branded assets, much easier to align.
→ A fintech company needs to feel trustworthy, not trendy.
→ A fashion brand might lean into contrast and bold expression.
→ A kids’ app needs energy, clarity, and emotional warmth.
→ A data-heavy dashboard requires colors that scale across charts and states.
To help you figure out which direction to take, we’ve pulled together a set of questions you should answer. These are the insights drawn from experience and inspired by smart conversations on Reddit.
Your color choices should align with how you want your audience to remember you.
Some of the most popular brand colors examples are Coca-Cola’s iconic red, which instantly communicates energy, excitement, and emotional boldness. LinkedIn’s muted blue signals professionalism, trust, and stability, ideal for a career-focused platform.
Not all colors fit all personalities. Subtle, desaturated tones might speak to sophistication and trust. Bright, punchy hues feel fun, energetic, even rebellious.
Notion’s monochrome design is a great UX decision. The absence of color shifts focus to the content and structure, which matches its purpose: a workspace for deep thinking and organization.
Look around your space. Are certain colors overused? Are there gaps?
You don’t need loud colors to stand out, just smart contrast. If you're in fintech and every player is blue, a warm, trustworthy green could give you instant distinction. Subtle differentiation is all it takes to make your brand easier to remember in a sea of sameness.
Sometimes following the rules is smart. Sometimes breaking them is smarter.
IBM sticks to its classic deep blue, a color long associated with stability and trust in the tech and enterprise space. In contrast, Slack introduced a more playful mix of purples, greens, and yellows, signaling collaboration and a more human, less corporate approach to workplace tools.
One reinforces the industry standard. The other redefines it.
Colors are a stylish solution, but they should go beyond that and support some functions. In situations like this, many startups trip up. They choose a beautiful palette that breaks when it’s applied to real-world use cases.
For example, Google Workspace uses multiple bright tones to differentiate apps, icons, and features. There, each color serves as a quick visual cue, helping users recognize tools instantly without reading a single label.
Your color system needs to work consistently everywhere your brand appears, including print materials, web design, mobile, social media, packaging, and UI.
A lean system might work at launch, but if you plan to release a mobile app, develop an analytics dashboard, or segment users, you’ll need more colors, more rules, and more logic behind them.
Now that we’ve covered almost all of our branding color guide, it’s time to get practical.
Experienced graphic designers don’t just pick random hex codes and hope for the best. They make every color choice with a purpose behind it. And since we’ve been through this process more times than we can count, we’ll explain how to build palettes in real projects.
Even the most creative minds hit a wall sometimes. You sit down to start a palette… and nothing clicks. Your brain’s playing elevator music, and the ideas just won’t land.
That’s when it helps to rely on external tools — smart platforms that can kickstart the process and help you explore directions you might not have considered. Over the years, we’ve built a shortlist of favorites we turn to again and again:
Adobe Color lets you explore multiple color modes by rotating a wheel. You can fine-tune each shade or let the tool generate a full scheme based on your selection. One standout feature is that you can upload a photo or image you like, and Adobe Color will extract a matching palette from it.
Coolors is fast, intuitive, and perfect for brainstorming. With a single tap, it can generate a range of palette combinations. You can lock in colors you like, shuffle the rest, and adjust hues, brightness, and saturation in real time. It’s especially useful when you want to explore different vibes quickly and visually.
Paletton is grounded in classic color theory. It’s built around the color wheel and helps you create harmonious combinations using logic like monochromatic, split complementary, or tetradic relationships. The interactive preview lets you see how your choices might look on a basic webpage layout.
While accessibility often focuses on contrast and clarity, it also has implications for how many colors in a color palette you should manage. To make it work for everyone, you must consider contrast, legibility, and usability across devices, screens, and vision types.
One reliable starting point is to build from established systems like the Material Design Color System or Apple’s iOS Developer Palette. These guidelines are focused on usability and provide colors with strong contrast ratios and clarity in various UI states.
Once you select a base color, you can fine-tune it further using opacity tweaks or the color picker in your design tool. Adjusting saturation or layering color over light and dark backgrounds helps ensure your UI stays clear and consistent.
You can also run your color system through tools like Contrast Checker or simulate common vision deficiencies to see how well your palette performs across accessibility needs.
Blending is one of the simplest ways to create tonal depth and expand your palette without introducing new colors. For this, take your highlight or primary tone and place it on top of your light and dark background colors using a multiply blend mode at around 8–12% opacity.
This technique helps you define a clean, structured range of supportive tones derived from your brand color, tones you can then reuse for hover states, secondary text, and disabled elements.
This method keeps your UI feeling connected and reduces the chances of visual noise.
Now that you’ve multiplied and blended your key tones, duplicate those colors with varying opacities (20%, 40%, 60%, etc.). These variations become your typography hierarchy, icon fills, input backgrounds, or inactive UI elements.
The benefit is visual clarity. Users instinctively know what’s primary, what’s secondary, and what’s inactive, all without extra explanation.
If you’re struggling to build harmony across your palette, try to rely on the following approaches:
This approach uses just one color in a variety of shades. It’s a great way to create a calm, unified, and sophisticated look. Monochromatic schemes are especially useful in minimal interfaces or content-heavy platforms where clarity matters more than vibrancy.
This harmony involves colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel, like red, orange, and yellow. It creates a smooth, natural flow and works well for brands that want to convey a warm, approachable, or organic feel.
This method pairs colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such as red and green, or blue and orange. Complementary schemes deliver high contrast and visual energy. They’re perfect for brands that want to be bold, dynamic, or attention-grabbing.
Triadic color schemes use three colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel, like red, yellow, and blue. This harmony brings balance and contrast without being too jarring. It’s great for creative brands or interfaces that need a clear distinction between elements.
Compound schemes mix and match elements from the systems above, picking colors that aren’t directly side-by-side or opposite but still feel balanced. These combinations often result in layered palettes with lots of personality.
Logo design is its own beast, but the principles still apply. Before committing to a complex gradient or multi-tone mark, consider how many colors should be in a logo for long-term use. Fewer usually scale better across print, dark mode, icons, and favicons, and help keep your system clean.
The colors you pick today won’t just live on your homepage. They’ll show up in ads, dashboards, invoices, error states, and probably places you haven’t even thought of yet. They’ll shape perception from the first second, long before your copy, product, or features ever get a chance to speak.
So don’t rush it. Build with intention. Let color work for you.
And if you ever feel stuck between “too safe” and “too loud,” know this: great design doesn’t come from choosing the trendiest hue. It comes from understanding what message your product needs to reinforce.
This is the kind of thinking we bring to every brand we work with. If that’s what you’re looking for, drop us a line.
