The Many Meanings of Yellow: From Warmth and Happiness to Caution

DesignCarrie Cousins • August 02, 2012 • 5 minutes READ

We all dream in color. Every design concept and sketch comes with some sort of color association. But what do those colors mean? What associations are we making just with that choice alone?

Yellow is considered the brightest and most cheerful of all the colors in the rainbow.

Here we take a look at yellow – meanings, color pairings and sites that are doing it well. But yellow is much more than that. Because the color can take on attributes from other colors (note how it fades dramatically when paired with white), it can have wide-ranging meanings. It is the lightest color on the color wheel and is a hue that people either seem to love or hate.

Shades of Yellow

Bzzy Ap

IAAH

Helveticons

Somersby Cider

Yellow has many psychological associations, maybe more than any other color. The hue is known to stimulate thinking and the nervous system and encourages communication and memory. It also though can agitate some people or even cause them to develop headaches. It is considered to be warm and inviting but also can emit a sense of caution or alert.

There are a wide range of emotions associated with yellow, so you must be careful how it used with other elements. Yellow is used to help people make a tough decision or when they seek clarity, as a relief from panic or exhaustion, to help stimulate the memory or to concentrate and to help prevent depression. Yellow can also represent caution or trepidation.

As a design tool, yellow is most often paired with another much darker color, such as black or blue, to create a point of emphasis. Yellow is also used to create a highlighting effect for elements or text. Pale yellows are often used as backgrounds. Yellow is a very difficult color to read on a white background and is generally avoided for large blocks of text.

Yellow is a color that can create striking contrast and bring attention to specific elements but is best used in moderation.

Light yellow: Lighter hues are often connected to joy, newness, freshness and smarts.

Bright yellow: The brightest yellows are considered to generate the happiest and most uplifting feelings. Brightness is associated with the sun and life, as well as cheerfulness.

Yellow-green: The color, when mixed with green, tends to represent nature. It is a color seen as new growth appears on plants and even again in the fall as leave turn from green to yellow.

Golden yellow: Wealth, riches and even royalty are associated with the most golden shades of yellow.

Dingy (or dirty) yellow: A muted yellow that looks dirty can have negative associations such as decay, sickness, or caution.

Cultural Considerations

Yellow is often seen as a color for children in American and European cultures, with many toys made in that color. Men, especially, tend to perceive the color as lacking prestige and childish. Yellow though is also associated with cheerfulness, joy and even caution.

In Islam, yellow is the color of wisdom.

Native Americans use yellow to represent unconditional love.

Color Wheel and Pairing

Yellow is one of three primary colors that make the color wheel. (The others are red and blue.) Primary colors can’t be created by mixing other colors and every other color in the rainbow is created by mixing shades of yellow, blue and red. The wheel further expands to 12 tertiary colors to create many of the most common color schemes.

You can use the color wheel to create color schemes of multiple hues that can create a sense of harmony or chaos. Create a scheme using three side-by-side colors for an analogous scheme – yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange. A complementary scheme pairs yellow and purple (opposites on the wheel), while natural schemes can match yellow, blue and green because each color appears in nature.

Famous Brand Associations

Lipton Tea

McDonald’s

Subway

Stanley Tools

Lipton Tea, McDonald’s, Subway, Midas, Stanley Tools and Nikon are a handful of companies that rely on yellow as a large part of their color scheme and corporate identity. Restaurants like the color because it is said to help stimulate the appetite. Note how many of these sites though use yellow as a logo or accent color but use another shade for much of the rest of the site.

Other well-known associations with yellow include the Yellow Brick Road from “The Wizard of Oz,” and the golden yellow hair that is described as belonging to many goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology. Yellow flags are also thrown as penalties in auto racing and football.

Doing It Well

Desyn

Desyn: This site really plays of the power of yellow to draw attention. Your eyes go right to the most important parts of the site – the name and work showcase.

Yellow Bird Project

Yellow Bird Project: This site does a great job of using different shades of yellow to create a fun, happy (and happening) effect.

La Moulade

La Moulade: This is another site that really uses the emotional associations of yellow to its advantage with shading and pairing with greenish tones. The overall effect is a feel that is positive, yet natural.