Choosing the right colours for your website, logo or anything else you use to market your business doesn’t need to be hard, you just need to understand a few basics about the psychology of colour and the emotional triggers may they evoke.
While certain colours do broadly align with specific traits (e.g. brown with ruggedness, purple with sophistication, and red with excitement), nearly every academic study on colours and branding will tell you that it’s far more important for colours to support the personality you want to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical colour associations.
With this said, the following list of colours and associations should be considered according to the strategy and ideas you are trying to achieve. Colour is one element within a design, and therefore colour should not be chosen in isolation.
RED:
Excitement
Imaginative and uniqueness
Independence
Contemporary
Passion and excitement
BLUE:
Sincerity and reliability
Down-to-earth
Originality
Cheerful
GREEN:
Reassurance
Intelligence
Confidence
Security
PURPLE:
Sophistication
Charming
Glamourous
Creativity
YELLOW:
Optimism
Rugged
Confidence
Friendliness
In a survey, people were asked to choose the colour they associated with particular words:
Trust: Most chose the colour blue (34%), followed by white (21%) and green (11%)
Security: Blue came out on top (28%), followed by black (16%) and green (12%)
Speed: Red was overwhelmingly the favorite (76%)
Cheapness: Orange came first (26%), followed by yellow (22%) and brown (13%)
High Quality: Black was the clear winner (43%), then blue (20%)
High Tech: This was almost evenly split, with black the top choice (26%) and blue and gray second (both 23%)
Reliability: Blue was the top choice (43%), followed by black (24%)
Courage: Most chose purple (29%), then red (28%), and finally blue (22%)
Fear/Terror: Red came in first (41%) followed by black (38%)
Fun: Orange was the top choice (28%), followed closely by yellow (26%) and then purple (17%)
Source: http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/associations.html