How to choose brand colors that actually work

Most brand colors get picked by vibe. You find a palette you like, drop it in, and a month later the site, the deck, and the Instagram grid don't look related. The fix isn't more taste. It's giving every color a job.

A working palette has five roles, not five favorites:

• Ink — the color you read body text in. Dark, high-contrast, boring on purpose.
• Canvas — the background everything sits on. Usually the lightest color.
• Primary — the one dominant branded color. The thing people picture when they picture you.
• Accent — the jolt. Used once per screen, for the thing you want clicked.
• Support — a quiet secondary surface, for cards and sections.

Five colors, five jobs. The moment a color has a job, you stop asking "do I like this?" and start asking "does this do its job?" — which is a question you can actually answer.

Then check one number: your ink on your canvas should clear a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text. A color can be right for the brand and still fail to be readable. Readability wins; find a darker ink.

Two traps to skip. First, don't make the accent do body text — it's a jolt, not a paragraph. Second, don't use all five colors at full strength on one screen. Most of a page is canvas and ink; primary and accent are rare by design.

One thing to do today: write down what each of your current colors is for. If two colors are fighting for the same job, one of them is the problem — not your eye.

Direction first, so nothing is built on a guess. The palette is one decision inside Brand Direction; the message, the type, and the one sentence a stranger understands are the rest.