It’s an important step, choosing your brand color.

Your brand color choice has a powerful impact on how your customers perceive your business.

No pressure!

Here’s the good news:

Adding color to your online marketing materials doesn’t cost anything. The only cost? The time it takes you to decide what brand colors to use.

Maybe that’s why so many people go overboard with color. How can you possibly choose just a handful of brand colors from the millions available?

But showing restraint when choosing a color palette is the #1 way professional graphic designers create memorable brands.

Read on to learn how it’s done!

Why choose a limited brand color palette?

Rather than develop a recognizable set of colors that people will associate with their brand, people add color with no restraint at all.

Using too many colors, ironically, dilutes the power of color to brand your business.

When you use a limited color palette of only two main colors, or even one, like …

• UPS brown
• Facebook blue
• Coca-Cola red

… you’ll be well on your way to building an unforgettable brand.

Minimize your colors for maximum impact

Your goal is for your prospects and customers to remember your colors, and begin to associate them with your business.

If you want this to happen, you can’t give them a long list of colors to remember.

Instead, pare down your color choices to two main colors and one accent color. Note sure what an accent color is? Take a look at the green button in the graphic below: it uses an accent color to draw attention!

I’ll show you how to choose a memorable color palette and give you some examples below.

How to choose two main brand colors and an accent color, too

My favorite online tool for choosing is ColourLovers.com.

For inspiration, click the Browse tab on the top left, and choose Palettes. If you see a color you like, make a note of the HEX number so you can try it when you create your own color palette from scratch.

(Not sure where to start? Good branding choices always begin with your ideal customer. Read about finding your ideal customer here.)

Step 1. Pick your two main colors

With your ideal customer in mind, click on the green Create button, and choose Palette from the dropdown menu. This is where the fun begins!

Remember, your goal is to choose just two main colors. Look for colors that are similar in tone.

For example, these color combinations are similar in tone. They’re equally saturated, pale, dark, or bright:

The color combinations below use different tones. They are mismatched combinations of dark and pale, dull and bright, pastel and saturated:

In the hands of an experienced designer, two main colors that have two completely different tones can work.

But to be on the safe side, if you’re not a designer, choose similar tones.

Take a look at the tool at Paletton.com for extra help picking similar-toned colors.

(Look at the examples again if you’re not sure what I mean. In the top set, the colors have similar brightness or darkness. In the bottom set, they’re different.)

Once you’ve chosen your two main colors, your next goal is to put them to use in all your marketing materials.

Step 2. Add an accent color to your brand

The first part of this exercise is to select two main colors. Use those colors consistently in everything you do to market your business.

Ready to take your color palette to the next level?

The next part of the exercise is to choose one accent color that will “pop” out from the rest of the elements on your pages.

The accent color should stand out because it’s different — brighter, darker, or in some way distinct from your two main colors.

It’s sometimes known as a “conversion color,” because using it in small doses helps to draw attention to a part of your page where you want people to take action — or to convert from passive readers to engaged subscribers or happy customers.

When your site consistently uses two main colors you’ll find that it’s easy to come up with an accent color that “pops” out.

Like this:

Notice how in the example above, your eye runs down the page and goes straight to the “Get Started” button?

That’s because it’s the only place on that page you can see such a bright color. The main brand colors are subdued and used very consistently across the rest of the page.

Some websites use way too many colors, and they compete with one another for attention.

But when you use too many colors like the example below, the accent color is just another color in the crowd:

The “Get Started” button gets lost in the example above. And that’s a shame because it’s the most important call to action on this page!

Think of the kitties that won’t be adopted because someone didn’t know how to use color on their website. 🙁

Now … are you ready to put those brand colors to really good use? Register to watch my branded images workshop.

This post was originally published on July 9, 2014 and has been updated with new information.