Colors and Nations: What to Consider When Choosing Colors for Your Brand

What’s good for West, may be a disaster for East, and vice versa: different cultures may have absolutely different attitude towards different colors, and even the most classical minimalistic black & white set may be a failure in some cases.

Of course, globalization is consequently tearing down these borders, especially in digital space, but still some cultural patterns are too ingrown in our minds to be so easily taken away by this globalization. For example, the above-mentioned black & white set. In Western countries, it’s the symbol of something serious, minimalistic and kinda business-like. It’s a good balance of purity, cleanliness, equality, simplicity and self-sufficiency (white) and comfort, strength, formality and sophistication (black).

But in many Eastern countries white is traditionally associated with death, mourning and funeral ceremonies. Actually, in countries as India or Thailand, black also has negative meaning of bad luck, anger and evil. In China, black is a color for young boys (well, Western teenagers like it, too). At the same time, in Arab traditional men’s clothes is white, women’s everyday clothes is black, and both these colors (together with green) are considered sacred.

Gray is a color of stability and neutrality, but if used alone, it may be boring and lost in the sea of commonness. In Slavic countries, gray is a synonym for “featureless and boring”. Still it may serve you great if properly combined with some other colors. Western cultures will appreciate gray and purple (violet) set – it is considered a royal combination. As well as in Japan – purple means wealth and prosperity.

Red is traditionally loved by Eastern cultures – it is a color of holidays, brides and celebrations. Still for Western nations, it may seem too aggressive and over-bearing, tiring. If with green, red means Christmas. A red rose is a kinda romantic symbol. Of course red is an energetic color, but you have to be careful with it not to make your brand a “stop” sign.

Yellow and gold are the colors of success, wealth and joy. In China, yellow is a color of emperors, even a sacred one. Gold is adored practically everywhere – thanks to the phenomenon of “Golden rush”. Still in some countries, in Egypt, for example, these two differ a lot: gold is for wealth and power, but yellow is for mourning. In Slavic countries, too much gold is considered kinda old-fashioned, rural, church-like and cheap (yes, what a paradox!). So be attentive! Yellow, if used in mild tones and too much, is traditionally treated as the color of the mentally diseased (in Western cultures).

In today’s world, there’s a great heap of color variants actually: red can be crimson, scarlet, marsala, maroon and many other. Lemon, cream, pantone and munsell are all yellow. Gray has many variations, too. And all these thousands of variations have different sub-meanings, and so much is to be taken into consideration… NinjaPromo team is sure: if used carefully and professionally, all colors will bring you joy of success and prosperity.