Color Theory: The Meanings of Colors For Your Coaching Brand

In order to choose colors for your coaching brand, you first have to understand color theory. The meanings behind the colors you use for your brand have a big impact on the first impression your brand makes with your audience, and if you’re not taking that into consideration when designing your brand, you’re missing out.

Each color has a meaning that we, as humans, understand by instinct. Whether it’s passed down through DNA or learned by life experience, we feel things when we see colors.

For example, I’m sure you’re aware that sunny yellow represents happiness, and red is passionate. But did you know red can raise a person’s blood pressure? And that yellow can actually make you feel warmer?

While the focus of this post is not really about the physical effects color can have, but rather the emotions they evoke and the feelings they represent, it’s definitely interesting to consider the physical reactions your audience could have to your brand colors.

To help you make your color choices smartly, we’re outlining the meanings of colors in this post.

Once you know how you want your audience to feel when they encounter your brand, you can choose colors that will support those desired emotions and create a brand that your ideal client feels connected to.

The Meanings of Color

Red

Represents: energy, strength, power, determination, passion, desire, love, danger, war

Red is a very emotionally intense color. It enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure.

Red brings text and images to the foreground. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions; it is a perfect color for ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Click Here’ buttons on Internet banners and websites.

Light red represents joy, sexuality, passion, sensitivity, and love.

Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.

Dark red is associated with vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.

Brown suggests stability and denotes masculine qualities.

Reddish-brown is associated with harvest and fall.

Orange

Represents: joy, enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, encouragement

To the human eye, orange is a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat. Orange increases oxygen supply to the brain, produces an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity.

Orange has very high visibility, so you can use it to catch attention and highlight the most important elements of your design.

Dark orange can mean deceit and distrust.

Red-orange corresponds to desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action.

Gold evokes the feeling of prestige. The meaning of gold is illumination, wisdom, and wealth. Gold often symbolizes high quality.

Yellow

Represents: happiness, joy, intellect, energy

Yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy.

Use yellow to evoke pleasant, cheerful feelings. You can choose yellow to promote children’s products and items related to leisure. Yellow is very effective for attracting attention, so use it to highlight the most important elements of your design.

Dull (dingy) yellow represents caution, decay, sickness, and jealousy.

Light yellow is associated with intellect, freshness, and joy.

Green

Represents: growth, harmony, freshness, fertility, safety

Green has great healing power. It is the most restful color for the human eye; it can improve vision.

Green is directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote ‘green’ products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world, banking, and Wall Street.

Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, and jealousy.

Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.

Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.

Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

Blue

Represents: trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, truth, faith, stability

Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect. It also suppresses appetite.

You can use blue to promote products and services related to cleanliness (water purification filters, cleaning liquids, vodka), air and sky (airlines, airports, air conditioners), water and sea (sea voyages, mineral water). As opposed to emotionally warm colors like red, orange, and yellow; blue is linked to consciousness and intellect.

Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.

Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.

Purple

Represents: royalty, power, nobility, luxury, ambition

According to surveys, almost 75 percent of pre-adolescent children prefer purple to all other colors.

Purple is a very rare color in nature; some people consider it to be artificial.

Light purple evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings.

Dark purple evokes gloom and sad feelings. It can cause frustration.

White

Represents: innocence, purity, virginity, goodness, light, perfection

White means safety, purity, and cleanliness. As opposed to black, white usually has a positive connotation. White can represent a successful beginning.

In advertising, white is associated with coolness and cleanliness because it’s the color of snow.

Black

Represents: power, elegance, formality, mystery, death, evil

Black is a mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown (black holes). It is considered to be a very formal, elegant, and prestigious color (black tie, black Mercedes).

Black gives the feeling of perspective and depth, but a black background diminishes readability.

Color Theory Can Help You

No matter what you stand for, and what you help your coaching clients with, color theory can help you make a better first, second, and tenth impression with your ideal client. When you have your colors right, and use them consistently in your branding, you send a strong message about what people can expect from working with you.

Bonus points if your colors align with your core values.