How Color Sells: Need to be Memorable? Add Yellow!

Color is about more than interior design and fashion; it is used for marketing products from diapers to diet soda, from office supplies to electronics, from bargain buys to luxury investments, color sells. The key is to learn how to use color to your advantage as it is often a subliminal influence. Once you know the psychology and the cultural differences you can layer hues from light to dark, subtle to bold, to achieve the desired response.

Do you know why legal pads were first yellow? It promotes memory retention. Now we have shifted to gray and blue eye-ease and no one remembers much anymore! Yet savvy marketers still use yellow to drive memory, look at McDonald’s with their golden arches, and Best Buy with its blue and yellow logo. They both stand out and are remembered.

Yellow gets noticed, think fast food and road construction. It is a great color for interior spaces with no windows, as it simulates sunshine. Think basements and back hallways. Be careful in brighter rooms as it can be a difficult color for the eye to process and see, causing irritation over time. Studies show that babies will cry more in a yellow room than any other color (think stop light yellow, not butter cream). n
Yellow is perceived as sunny and bright and is often used in Eastern facing rooms. Eastern light tends to be harsher, brighter and bluer and the yellow hues soften and diffuse the glare.

Singularly it is one of the most difficult colors to wear as too often we associate it with jaundice or yellow fever, or a sallow complexion. Yellow is also frequently considered an optimistic shade that promotes good humor and smiles. Remember the yellow smiley faces? Once you have mastered the mystery of color, you can put the psychology to work for your success and even your profit.