Is grey the new black? Dan Slagen from Crayon shares his research into colours on the web.
It’s easy to associate a company with one or two colours, as is often the goal of a brand (eg Coke = red). And there are manyexamples of brands that have successfully ‘owned’ a colour.
But right now, something strange is going on. In many cases, the colours brands actually use on their website are not the same as their official brand colours.
Take Facebook, for example. What colour do you associate Facebook with most often? Most likely, Facebook Blue which consists of R:59, G:89 and B:152 as pictured below (thanks toBrandcolours.net).
But what happens when you take a closer look at the user interface on Facebook.com?
As represented above (thanks to Colourpeek), there are over 25 colours represented, which consist of the following RGB ratios:
Now keep in mind that the colour that people associate most with Facebook is Facebook Blue. The overall average of all colours used by Facebook as represented in the excel chart above is actually:
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- Average R:106
- Average G:126
- Average B:133
Psychological impact
So it’s worth taking a look at the psychological impact each of these colours is supposed to have on people. For that, we’ll consult the Colour Wheel of Emotion, courtesy of the Logo Company: So according to this chart at least, it turns out Facebook wants people to associate their brand with ‘trust’ – which makes sense considering it’s a social network where people are sharing intimate details of their life. But when on the site, Facebook wants users to have a sense of ‘calm’, which also makes sense considering the chaotic nature of the Newsfeed. Even with new posts updating every minute, new videos, ads, updates, friend requests, event invites, messages from that person you don’t really want to hear from (the worst)… you’re subconsciously enveloped in a calming grey that will encourage you to endlessly scroll and stay on the site. Well played, Facebook. This got our team here at Crayon thinking: is this trend happening all around us at a subconscious level without most people noticing? For further analysis, we also examined two of the web’s other biggest sites, YouTube and Ebay, to find out. We list our findings below…01. Facebook
Brand association colour: Website experience colours:- Average R:106
- Average G:126
- Average B:133
02. YouTube
Brand association colour: Website experience colour:- Average R:150
- Average G:141
- Average B:143
03. Ebay
Brand association colours: Website experience colour:- Average R:153
- Average G:166
- Average B:177