The Impact of Color on Your Customer's Behavior

Why Color Determines Whether a Product Is Purchased — and Trusted

Does a pink drill sell? Certainly. There is an entire product line with pink tools. But do we also trust that a pink hammer drill can go through a concrete wall?

That's an interesting question. And the answer lies in the laws of color.

Color Determines Revenue

Research shows that consumer behavior is influenced 80 to 90% by color. Color is thus largely decisive for the success of a product and a company's revenue.

If you know this, it almost goes without saying that knowledge of the laws of color is essential for anyone who works with color. In the design and production process, choosing and managing the right color is part of it. Three things play a central role: harmony, aesthetics, and experience.

1. Harmony

It is an unconscious process that determines whether someone buys a product or not. Color harmony plays a role in this.

Color harmony means: the balance of different colors, whereby the combination creates a pleasant effect. The law of affective combination states that the affective value of a color combination depends on the affective value of the individual colors. In complex color compositions, it appears that the composition of the pattern carries more weight than the individual colors.

So it's about whether colors fit together.

A concrete example: a composite product like a heating boiler. It must be right — we expect the color of each component to be exactly the same. A slight color deviation on a specific valve can influence consumer behavior: consciously or unconsciously, it detracts from the perception of the product's quality.

And this applies not only to heating boilers. It applies to any product in which multiple components must visually form a whole — from car interiors to packaging, from medical equipment to consumer electronics.

2. Aesthetics

In addition to harmony, aesthetics play a role. This is about beauty, attractiveness. Do we find something beautiful or ugly?

It is a subjective concept — we judge a color from our personality, culture, and background. You could even say that our past looks along.

Yet it can be reasonably well predicted whether a particular color choice is experienced as beautiful or ugly. Because we know that harmony, order, contrasts, and tones have an effect on the experience. In a color design plan, a designer has these four instruments at their disposal:

| Instrument | Effect | | ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Harmony | Balance between colors — calm or tension | | Order | Structure in color use — hierarchy and coherence | | Contrast | Difference in lightness, saturation, or hue — attention and accent | | Tone | The overall impression of the color palette — warm, cool, bright, muted |

3. Experience

We experience blue as fresh, red as warm. Color association follows patterns:

• Warning — color alerts us to dangerous situations. In traffic, a traffic light tells you what to do
• Health — through skin color, we know if someone is sick
• Mood — color gives meaning to architecture and space
• Identity — clothing, packaging, and brand color radiate an identity

Knowledge of the psychological aspects of color is needed to make the right choices in a color plan. Not only for consumer products, but also for spatial design, brand identity, and product positioning.

The Responsibility of the Color Designer

All in all, color has many functions in our existence. The impact on consumer behavior is great — greater than most organizations realize.

What matters in color design is that people are always seeking balance, harmony. If it's not there, we feel uncomfortable. In this, color designers have a great responsibility.

And that responsibility begins with knowledge.

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👉 Want to learn more about color psychology and color in marketing? View the courses at kleurenschool.nl

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Questions about color and consumer behavior? Contact the specialists at the Netherlands Color Institute: https://kleurinstituut.nl/contact