Colour + Branding: Sephora’s compelling colour palette
CASE STUDY - Luxury touch and feel for mobile
Vassily Kandinsky said that “Colour is a power which influences directly the soul”. Colour has the ability to bring your brand to life, but how should you choose the best colour palette for a luxury touch and feel?
First, let’s define the colour role in the digital sphere:
- The primary colour is the dominant colour of your brand, logo or product. For a luxury feel and touch, black communicates exclusivity and authority.
- The secondary colour has 2 objectives: one being functional (semantic colour) and second supporting the brand (accent colour). Functional means validation or error messages that a user might find on the journey.
- Neutral colours are usually white, grey and black. These colours are usually made for text, background or icons.
Based on research, the ideal model to achieve colour harmony online is:
- 60% primary colours
- 30% neutral colours
- 10% accent colours
Case study: How did Sephora design their colour palette?
The 3 visuals below are taken from the application of Sephora. The “red pink” clearly dominates throughout the application, however it isn’t the primary colour.
In fact, the red pink as the secondary colour lifts the minimalist cold platform and conveys a sense of sensuality, feminity and pleasure. This colour allows to bring the brand to a entertaining level that could be explored further in gaming or virtual user experiences.
Sephora uses of colour is smart because they focus on minimal black and white colour code to express luxury, structure and authority.
White has a strong presence. Is white or black the primary colour? White in this case is filling the negative space therefore black becomes the primary colour. It makes sense as Black is the logo colour.
This case shows that minimal choice of 3 colours works very well. The iconic black and white is the perfect platform on which the brand can fully express with 1 distinctive colour. The red pink chosen by Sephora is a mixed colour bringing together the sensuality of the red, the entertaining orange and the modern soft pink.
The main takeaways to me are that:
- A digital architecture (mobile or website) using Black and White gives a sense of structure and solidity
- 1 accent colour (visuals and application functional buttons) strengthens the branding while creating a memorable impact. The best practice is the smart choice of the accent colour showing sophistication and expressing the core values of Sephora.
Thank you for reading this case.
