Choosing the palette for a project isn’t always easy.

Making art involved a ton of steps. It doesn’t matter what kind of art it is – even if your goal is unfiltered expression… there’s gonna be thinking involved! And honestly, for me, sometimes the hardest of those steps is choosing my palette. It’s especially true if I’m painting – and sometimes, I like to give myself some starting points! In fact, that’s actually how this series of blog posts started in the first place.

But anyway, the point I’m getting to, is when you’re choosing a palette, you might want to think about the colour psychology behind the choices you’re making!

Purple Colour Palettes bring Wisdom & Whimsy

If you’re leaning toward purples for your upcoming project, whether it’s a painting, or a brand design – there are tons of reasons to go that direction! Purple has a long history when it comes to the associations and impact it has for a viewer, going back to the royal associations with purple dyes, and even further, to our evolutionary past where purple berries meant, in many cases, food. 

It’s also relevant to note that purple is the shortest wavelength on the visible spectrum of light – on its other side, there’s ultraviolet rays, which we’re not blessed with the ability to detect with our eyes’ cones and rods. Many varieties of bird, fish, reptiles – even some other mammals, like deer – can detect this light with their eyes, but for us… purple is the end of the road. 

Purple palettes can come from many inspiration sources…

Purple palettes can be drawn from all kinds of different inspiration, but like most colour palettes… I prefer to draw from the natural world. Luckily, there are an unbelievable number of purple tones available in our environment to choose from, whether you’re looking for the soft floral hues of lavender or lilac, or the more vibrant indigo-purple of an iris. 

Purple hues are spiritual, and magical! 

Purple colour palettes in branding are used frequently for those who do spiritual work – and when we think of a “wizard”, other than picturing Harry Potter, of course, we tend to picture them wearing a purple robe. It’s believed that many of these associations with mysticism come from purple’s position at the end of visible light, which I mentioned earlier. There are also ties here to luxury, because rich purple dyes were prohibitively expensive in the past, and therefore wearing or adorning one’s spaces in purple was a luxury only afforded to the wealthiest of persons. 

So in modern-day branding, and colour psychology, this phenomena has led to purple’s associations with luxury, and opulence. 

Every colour palette is all about balance

I talk about balance a lot when it comes to colour palettes, but there’s a good reason for that! Simply deciding that you want purple for your palette, and that it will automatically be soft and calm because it’s purple… well that’s not really enough.

When you’re deciding on the TONE you want to communicate through your palette, you can bring energy into nearly any set of hues, through saturation, shade, tone, and cohesion.

Want to start with your own image?

These palettes make great starting points, but if you have a specific image or mood board you want to start with, you can totally do that instead! Grab your image or images, and then, get that colour picker going!! If you’re not a Canva user, or an Adobe guru, then sites like Coolers.co can make your process super simple. Just pop your image in, and it’ll generate palettes based on it for you to tweak and choose from! Adobe has a similar free tool here, if you’re more of an Adobe human.

So I have my palette – Now What?

Start using it consistently! Success after rebranding (or branding for the first time) comes down largely to consistency. You want to make sure that once you’ve chosen your colour palette, you use it across all of your social media, as well as your entire online presence. Inject it into any branding images that you take for your company, including the wardrobe in your headshots. Make sure that the vibe created in your content aligns with the mood created by the palette!

If your purple palette is light, and airy, and uplifting, keep things light, and airy, and uplifting. If the purple colour palette you’re using is deep, and moody, and ethereal… same deal. Stick within the mood that is curated by the colours you’ve selected.

Trying to decide whether pink palettes would work for your brand?

If you’re stuck on whether a purple palette might work for your branding, or your upcoming project, I’d love to have a chat! We can talk about whether purples are actually the way to go, or whether the emotions you’re looking to instill in your audience would be better communicated with a different palette base entirely!

Happy designing!

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