The Best Colors for Business Signs: What Attracts Customers

Up to 90% of purchasing decisions are based on color alone.

Up to 90% of product selections are founded strictly on color. Have you ever stopped to think about everything that plays a part in your decision-making process?

According to a Management Decision study, within 90 seconds of a product’s first impression is when people choose – and color single handedly contributes up to 90 percent of the information that forms the decision.

As we learn our 2026 Color of the Year by Pantone, the importance of color rises in our minds once again. Color isn’t just something selected for design aesthetics – it can actually be a strategic tool for subconscious communication. It can cross language and cultural appeal barriers to the heart of a person and influences customer behavior and brand perception.

More Than a Hue

Artists, designers and sign makers know that combining the right colors is important for success. All humankind actually has the innate ability to feel when colors are combining in a visually pleasing way or not.

Color theory is the explanation of this: the idea of using different colors and the emotional impact they can make. First released in 1905 by the Father of Color Theory Albert H. Munsell, these concepts simplified color expression and also made it more accurate. Today, so many industries use his work out in the field. The Munsell system is used by The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to precisely measure and grade food for bringing safe and ripe food to grocery shelves, while The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accesses his work to clearly define hair and skin color in the field of forensic pathology.

Create a balanced brand palette with color harmony that attracts customers.

According to Munsell’s work, a hue is the purest and brightest version of a color. The intensity or vibrancy is called saturation. Finally, how dark or light the color appears is called the value, and black or white can be added to adjust this. The hue with white creates a tint and the hue with black added creates a shade. To create a well-ordered brand palette, it’s important to create harmony through different color combinations, enhancing your visual branding.

In addition to strategically selecting colors, you can also use color for your brand through components like custom signage design and graphics. Incorporating your color scheme effectively in your visuals can help you attract customers, increase the visibility of your message and create a more memorable experience for consumers. Ensuring color contrast is critical for signage visibility and customer attraction.

Colors are the Emotional Heartbeat of Your Brand

A recent Pantone blog post by Vice President of Pantone Color Institute™ Laurie Pressman highlighted: “as we move into an increasingly complex cultural landscape, color remains one of our most intuitive tools for translating the invisible, emotions, intentions, values, into something we can see, feel, and remember.”

To utilize this powerful tool, consider how a variety of colors can elicit a specific emotional response. Here are just a few of the many colors to employ within your space to evoke the ideal customer engagement.

Colors to Impact Consumer Emotions:

Red: The passion, energy or urgency of red can be used everywhere from promotional offers and red roses to warning signs. This color is a head turner and has also been known to increase adrenaline levels and heart rate. When overused, it can be too much. But when paired with yellow, it can provoke one’s appetite. As a result, it is used in well-known fast food restaurants.

The color red conveys passion and urgency for your business or brand.

Green: Well-known as a health and wellness color, it also brings a connotation of money and wealth. The strong tie to nature creates a calming effect with people. Calming colors are now being used to create environments that support neurodiversity. Softer shades and organic neutrals provide lower stimulation than louder colors, which aids environments for students or employees and with fewer triggering experiences overall.

Green signifies wellness and wealth, and it also elicits a calming response in people.

Blue: Known to communicate stability, trust and competence, the color blue is a popular choice for healthcare providers to organizations for youth. Another benefit is that it has a calming effect within a space, which can create peace in an otherwise chaotic environment.

By using blue in an environment, you not only create a calming feeling for visitors but also convey competence and stability.

Yellow: Large amounts of the bright yellow hue can be jarring since it’s not largely experienced in nature. When balanced with white, it can alternatively offer warmth and happiness. As an attention-grabbing color, it can also be an effective color to use for signage when used with enough contrast.

When balanced with the color white, yellow can provide a sense of happiness and warmth to the eye.

Reasons to Incorporate Color into Your Brand Strategy

1. Increases Visibility and Attracts Attention

Bold colors that create color contrast can truly enhance visibility and readability for consumers. To do this, another aspect of color theory comes into play. Complementary colors, which are polar opposites on the color wheel, create vibrancy when placed next to each other. This enables the greatest contrast for viewers and for elements to be set apart. A few examples of complementary colors are purple/yellow and red/green.

Analogous colors are neighbors on the color wheel and create less contrast. An example of these would be yellow, yellow-green and green. While these allow for a cohesive and calm vibe, they can negatively impact the effectiveness of a sign’s message when used next to each other (such as a font on top of a background all in the analogous color family). Complementary colors not only increase visibility: they can also attract attention and encourage engagement, inspiring customers to do a double-take of your product, kiosk or business. By using contrasting colors, you open the door to readily interest your consumer base.

2. Enhances Retention and Memory

There’s been significant research to prove that color impacts memory performance through the encoding, retrieval and retaining processes. Vibrant colors specifically have been shown to enhance memory encoding.

Studies that dive into how colors impact memory tasks have highlighted that red influences detail and memory, blue impacts recall for creative memory, green promotes focus and yellow enhances motivation. So whether you’re educating consumers on your new brand or reinforcing who you are, a consistent set of brand colors can go a long way in setting yourself apart from the competition. This ultimately aids in boosting consumer memory.

3. Create Brand Recognition

Color has long been a tool of iconic brands. You can leverage a brand palette to create a strong visual identity that reflects your values and becomes recognizable over time. From the beloved blue hue of Tiffany & Co. to Coca-Cola’s unforgettable red, a strong brand with a consistent color palette is a powerful force.

The Role of Color in Signage

Recent marketing research details that around 80% of our sensory assimilation is visual, so there’s a powerful role that color plays in creating effective signage for a business. This reinforces effective marketing strategy and impacts buying decisions.

High-contrast color pairings on signage are necessary for long-distance reading and visibility. When contrasting colors are incorporated into a sign’s design, they can also direct consumer eyes to pertinent information highlighted.

According to a study by University of Southern California, a consumers' response to brand identity and color usage can affect brand affinity. Therefore, marketers who employ color psychology successfully can influence buying behavior as well as brand loyalty.

Consistently incorporating your brand’s unique color palette throughout every piece of signage in your space can elevate recall of your brand. A sign or space that is memorable can impact how your customers perceive your business and feel when they interact with your brand.

Strategically Choose and Use Your Brand Palette

There should be a strategy behind incorporating color for your brand; it can be more than a decorative choice and ought to be critically considered in all marketing efforts.

Want to harness all that color can do for your brand’s signage? Our signage experts are ready to help you design visual communication that looks professional, communicates a message and creates meaningful impact for your brand, ultimately benefiting your bottom line Contact FASTSIGNS today!