Power of Color in Digital Signage: A Guide to Captivating Audiences

“Colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious.”- Carl Jung

With the constant barrage of visual stimuli we experience every day, is your digital signage blending in or standing out? How can you make your messages pop and grab attention as people walk by?

The answer lies in the power of color. People have known that color affects mood and more for centuries. As far back as 2000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians used rooms painted in certain hues or crystals that split sunlight as a form of medical treatment. Recent studies seem to indicate that color can even affect how we taste food.

Color psychology explores the profound impact of colors on human emotions, behaviors, and decision-making. Video game designers have even started using principles from this to enhance players’ sense of immersion in the virtual world.

By unlocking the power of color, you can transform your digital signage from mere information displays into powerful communication tools that encourage action and get the reactions you want.

Understanding the Psychology of Color

Colors are not just visual elements; they evoke deep-seated emotional responses that affect our moods, emotions, and decision-making. Some think that colors may carry inherent meaning, while others think meaning is conveyed through personal associations. There may also be biological factors involved as well. For example, our blood turns red on contact with the air, so we are hardwired to notice red very quickly. Depending on the context in which we see something red, it may signal danger or love or even warmth.

Seeing a particular color releases chemicals that trigger physiological changes which influence our behavior. Our evaluations after seeing a color happen automatically and often force color-motivated behavior. Red, often associated with energy and urgency, can be used to drive immediate action, while the calming blue inspires trust and tranquility, and seems to encourage people to not change their behavior.

Some of the most common colors used in digital signage and their psychological associations in North America and most of Europe are:

Red: Stimulating, passionate, urgent. Ideal for calls to action, sales, and promotions.
Blue: Trustworthy, professional, calming. Effective for conveying information, building brand trust, and promoting security.
Green: Natural, harmonious, healthy. Ideal for eco-friendly messages, wellness initiatives, and creating a sense of balance.
Yellow: Cheerful, optimistic, energetic. Excellent for attracting attention, promoting new products, and conveying happiness.
Purple: Luxurious, sophisticated, creative. Ideal for high-end brands, conveying royalty, and inspiring innovation.

Cultural Considerations

Color perceptions vary significantly across cultures. What evokes joy in one culture might signify danger in another. It’s crucial to conduct thorough research and consider cultural nuances when designing digital signage for a global audience. For example, in Western movies, heroes wear white, and villains wear black, but in most Asian countries those colors are reversed. Studies have also found that how colors influence people can also change somewhat depending on the person’s age or even gender.

As always, it’s crucial to know who your target audience is and what associations they most likely have with certain colors.

Color Combinations

Many of us grew up with the color wheel. This shows the three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) equally spaced around a circle, with the secondary colors placed in between them. So, purple is a combination of red and blue and is between those two colors; orange is red and yellow, and green is made up of blue and yellow. This is the system for visible light and paints. But for computer screens, the primary colors are red, green, and blue (RGB).

Much graphic and digital design has tried to take advantage of color psychology by combining colors in different ways to evoke different feelings. The Behavioral Design Academy has a webpage on different color schemes that includes two main categories of combinations: calm and stressed.

Some combinations feel harmonious and evoke feelings of peace and balance:

Complementary (opposites on the color wheel, like yellow and purple)
Split complementary (the two colors to either side of an opposite, like purple with orange and green)
Analogous (three colors next to one another, like red, purple, and blue)

Some combinations strain the user’s eyes, because one color reaches the eye faster than the other. This happens because, while they may not be far from one another on the color wheel, they are quite far apart on the color spectrum, which means they have very different wavelengths. This is called chromostereopsis and sometimes creates an optical illusion in which the images seem to wobble a bit. This is especially true in these combinations with one color text on a background of a different color.

Some combinations that cause this are:

Red on blue or cyan, or blue or cyan on red
Red on green or green on red

Many designers try and avoid these combinations entirely. However, you might want to use this effect from time to time in order to really pull attention to a message.

Color in a Visual Hierarchy

Basic design principles include various characteristics like size, contrast, alignment, proximity, whitespace, and color. These can be altered to create a visual hierarchy, so that the target audience notices certain things first. For example, people tend to see larger things before smaller things, things that are out of alignment before things that are in alignment, and things that have more whitespace around them (they seem more isolated).

When it comes to color, people notice bright colors before they take note of darker ones. Colors that contrast with one another are also more eye-catching. Black and white is an obvious example. When placed next to one another, the contrast is at a maximum. Colors that are opposites on the color wheel also tend to stand out more (like yellow and purple together). When placed next to one another, they both seem brighter to the eye.

There are other factors as well when considering colors, like shadows, gradients, shades, tones, tints, and hues. The Interactive Design Foundation has a useful guide to these considerations and more tips to help you master all the basics of designing with color psychology in mind.

Examples of Color Psychology in Action

Many professional designers have created some memorable images using color. One of the more famous examples is the specific red and yellow used by McDonald’s. They were chosen because they are close to the colors of ketchup and mustard in the U.S., and evoke feelings of energy, urgency, happiness and, yes, hunger, in people from North America.

The same holds true when designing for the digital world. The specific blues used by Facebook indicate stability and trust, and Spotify’s green suggests growth and freshness.

Color has also been found to affect conversion rates for websites. HubSpot conducted a study and discovered that red call-to-action buttons got clicked on 21% more often than green ones. Amazon purposefully makes their “add to cart” button a particular type of yellow because their research shows that this yellow creates feelings of optimism but also impulsiveness.

Here are some specific ways you can use color to design effective digital signage messages within certain contexts and markets:

Corporate: Calm and neutral colors for informational messages, bright colors for alerts or announcements, warm colors and shades for motivational messaging. See corporate digital signage content examples here.
Manufacturing: Dark blue or black backgrounds for text-heavy content like shift schedules and production stats, orange/red for time-sensitive alerts, yellow for safety tips and reminders. See manufacturing content examples here.
Healthcare: Leverage blue to convey trust and professionalism, green to promote well-being and healing. Calm colors in waiting area messaging can ease stress.
K-12 Schools: Primary colors with secondary accents; use solid colors instead of patterns.
University: Brighter shades to suggest fun and grab attention, black accents for seriousness, brand colors for institutional announcements, team colors for sports updates. See examples here. See university digital signage examples here.
Financial: Green for financial news, blue for institution updates, purple for high value offers and options, more use of tertiary colors like red-violet or blue-green.
Retail: Use red to highlight sale items, green to promote eco-friendly products.
Restaurants: Utilize yellow to create a warm and inviting ambiance, green to promote healthy menu options or ethically sourced options. Avoid blue as it’s thought to suppress appetites.

Color-Coding Content for Enhanced Clarity

Color-coding messages can significantly improve audience comprehension and engagement. Humans respond almost instantly to color, so using it to make the topic of your content immediately recognizable makes a lot of sense. Whether information is presented as a message or a ticker, you can change the background and/or foreground colors for certain reasons. For example, most tickers default to light text on a dark background, but maybe you want to draw special attention to an item there, so you reverse this, using a light background with dark text.

The most obvious use case is for emergency alerts. As mentioned before, one of the associations with this color is urgency. For an audience that normally never sees messages with a red background, suddenly seeing these pop up on the screens will instantly let them know that something has changed, and they need to pay attention.

However, color-coding can be just as effective for other situations as well:

HR Announcements: Employ a consistent color (e.g., light brown) for all HR-related messages.
Sales & Promotions: Use a vibrant color (e.g., orange or red) to highlight sales-related content.
News Bulletins: Employ a professional color (e.g., navy blue) for displaying important news.
Sustainability: Green is an obvious choice here for practices and tips that further your organization’s ESG initiatives.

Of course, this all works best if the colors you use somehow tie into your existing brand guidelines. Either design with specific colors and shades you already use, or make sure that the ones you use are somehow complimentary with your brand colors.

You can even develop a color language across your entire organization, so people quickly get used to a particular color indicating a particular type of message:

Work out a comprehensive color system for departments, topic, emergencies and so on.
Publish this system where content creators can access it, so everything they make fits within the established guidelines. Design fill-in templates to save them time.
Have a system in place to double-check that colors are being used correctly. It would be counterproductive to train your audience to expect a certain type of message when they see a yellow background and then display content not on that topic or from that department. Consistency is important here.
Test your color system and get feedback from your audience as to what works and what doesn’t. Then adjust if need be.

You’ll probably have to try different combinations with a way to measure your success, and finetune how you use colors for your specific audience. This will dramatically improve the success of your digital signage communications.

Designing for Colorblind Audiences

Approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women experience some form of color blindness. This means that a significant portion of your audience may not be able to see your digital signage messages clearly if you rely solely on color to convey information.

The idea that colorblind people only see gray is a myth. Color blindness is the reduced ability to distinguish between certain colors, and very few are born with monochromatic vision. The most common types of color blindness are the inability to recognize blue/yellow or red/green, with the latter being more common.

Certain color combinations can be difficult to read for colorblind people:

Green and red, blue, brown, black, or gray
Light green and yellow
Blue and purple or gray

If you know for certain that you have colorblind viewers in your target audience, consider some monochromatic designs. Use different shades of the same color for contrast instead of multiple colors. This can still fit within a color-coded system, if you are using one. Contrast is always important in design, but it’s crucial for colorblind people. High contrast is just easier to read for everyone.

Since some people have a sort of color blindness that allows them to see color only when there’s a certain amount of it present, try using thicker lines.

Here are some tips for designing digital signage that is inclusive of colorblind viewers:

Prioritize Contrast: Utilize high-contrast color combinations (black & white, yellow & blue, green & red).
Minimize Color Reliance: Don’t solely rely on color to convey information. Incorporate text, symbols, and icons.
Test with Color Blindness Simulators: Use online tools like the Colblindor Color Blindness Simulator or the Color Oracle to test your designs from a colorblind perspective.

Creating Effective Color Palettes

Once you understand the psychology of color and how to design for colorblind viewers, you can start creating effective color palettes for your digital signage. Here are some tips:

Limit Your Palette: Stick to a maximum of three or four colors for a clean and visually appealing design.
Integrate Brand Colors: Incorporate your brand colors to reinforce brand identity and recognition.
Strategic Color Accents: Use bold or contrasting colors sparingly to highlight key messages and calls to action.

Designing with Color Checklist

Create a checklist for using a comprehensive and intentional color palette throughout your designs. You’ll want to keep color psychology in mind, along with any brand colors and styles.

Consider the overall mood.
Choose a main color.
Choose a complementary color.
Choose which shades and tints for both.
Pick a neutral color.
Pick an accent color.
Pick a texture palette.
Decide on a font and font color.
Consider how all the colors will look together in the finished design (this includes using contrast and combinations).

The Bottom Line

By understanding the psychology of color and implementing these best practices, you can create captivating digital signage that not only attracts attention but also effectively communicates your message, influences behavior, and leaves a lasting impression.

Get more insights with our podcast episode about color theory & psychology, or download our Masterclass Digital Signage Design Guide.