When it comes to designing a book cover and choosing which color you should use, there’s more that goes into this process than what appeals to your eye. You also need to consider the psychology of colors and what could evoke different emotions from your readers. By knowing the power of colors and how they can bring out different moods, emotions, and feelings, you’ll be able to attract more readers. Below, we’ll discuss color psychology in book cover design and how to use it to your advantage when designing your book cover.
What Is Color Psychology?
Color psychology is the study of how color can affect a person’s mood, behaviors, memories, and decision-making. Each hue of color can bring out different emotions in people. For example, blue can evoke calmness, and red can bring out passion.
Targeting The Right Genre With Colors
It’s important to understand what emotions colors can evoke so you know which color to use for your book cover.
- Blue – brings a sense of calmness, trust, and intelligence. Blue is a great color for non-fiction books, like self-help books.
- White – represents cleanliness, purity, simplicity, and new beginnings. White is the perfect color for self-help or spiritual books.
- Red – signifies passion and intensity. Red can easily be used for passionate romance and thriller books.
- Green – represents growth, tranquility, harmony, and freshness. Green is a good color to use for fantasy and nature books.
- Purple – is a great color to use for sci-fi and fantasy books, as it represents luxury, superiority, and mystery.
- Orange – evokes creativity, enthusiasm, and energy. This color could be used in a YA fiction book.
- Yellow – symbolizes warmth, happiness, optimism, friendliness, and joy. Yellow is the perfect color to use for comedic and children’s books.
- Black – conveys elegance, power, authority, mystery, and control. The color black can be used in thrillers or mystery books.
Another thing to keep in mind with colors is the tone and shade. Using a darker shade of a color can be more intense, whereas a light shade could be more inviting. For example, light blue is great for self-help books, and dark blue is great for mysteries.
Avoid Clashing Colors
The last thing you’ll want to do when designing a cover is for the colors you choose to clash. Making the color wheel your friend is important to avoid this from happening. Using colors that are opposite on the color wheel will harmonize well with each other. Also, keeping your colors simple and not using more than three different colors will prevent the colors from colliding.
Readability
When creating a cover, it’s important that the text stands out. You don’t want to have this colorful cover but not be able to read the title and text. While the color plays a huge role in getting your cover to stand out, you’ll still want the text to be legible. If you go with a dark color for your cover, you’ll want to use a light color for your text.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, using the right colors to create your book cover can attract and evoke different emotions from your readers. By understanding the psychology of color in book cover design, you’ll effectively set the tone of your book and catch the eyes of potential readers.
To ensure that the color of your cover flows well with the rest of your cover and represents your book the way it should, Book Brush is here to help! We offer a Custom Cover Package, where we’ll create a stunning cover for you. You won’t have to worry about the pressure of creating the perfect cover when we can do it for you. Our team will stick to current book cover trends and aim to capture the essence and genre of your book. To learn more about our service and for us to learn about what you need in a book cover, make sure you book a free twenty-minute consultation with us!
