Personal Branding colours…. what are you saying when you wear blue

Karen Haller 01
Karen Haller

Personal Branding colours…. what are you saying when you wear blue.
Companies who wear blue uniforms are looking to instil trust, integrity, and authority. This is not only to instil these feelings for their staff but for their customers too.

positive psychological qualities of blue
Blue relates to the mind, the intellect, affecting us mentally. We associate it to logic, communication, trust, integrity and efficiency. It also represents calmness, reflection and serenity.

Companies that have mid to darker tones as their uniform colour are usually corporate style businesses who wish to communicate trust, logic, intellect, seriousness and authority whilst still being approachable. It also displays a level of conservatism and traditional values. The ‘standard’ uniform for technology company IBM employees, sometimes referred to as ‘Big Blue’ was a dark blue suit.

A company that has lighter tones of blue in their uniforms are open to friendly communication, ‘blue-sky’ creative thinking. Calming the mind and aiding concentration. This may be the reason why some hospital surgeons choose to wear light blue whilst performing surgery.

You will often see schools choosing the colour blue for their school uniforms. As it is the colour that represents the mind, depending on the tone it can help the students to focus and concentrate through to creative thinking and being open to discussion and sharing of ideas. It can also have a calming effect.

negative psychological qualities of blue
Like any colour there is a negative side to the colour blue. This becomes evident when the qualities of the colour aren’t be upheld. . It is easy for blue to appear cold, aloof and uncaring.

Many tones of blue
There are many tones of blue from light sky blue through to midnight blue and the many tones in between such as powder blue, duck egg  blue, sapphire, royal blue, cornflower blue, indigo, navy and teal, just to name a few.

Like any colour, it’s important to wear the right tone of blue, the right proportion and know the effects it has in combination with the other colours you are wearing. Knowing the effect this has on you and how others may respond to you, you’ll know which situations to wear it even for those who don’t wear a uniform.


Do you wear a blue uniform? How does it make you feel?

If you enjoyed reading this post you may also be interested in Colour Psychology – the meaning of blue and other  Personal Branding posts.

Images: The Punch , Incorporate wear, Heathside Surrey School

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4 Comments

  1. Tamsin Fox-Davies on May 1, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    I think a lot of people steer away from wearing blue because of the ‘uniform’ connotations that it has.

    • admin on May 7, 2012 at 4:38 pm

      Interesting point you make there Tamsin as this is an example of colour association. When something over time becomes associated to a colour. This appears to have happened with the colour blue and uniforms.

  2. Tanya Rennick on May 14, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    I really love the combination of sky blue and chocolate brown. Funnily enough, they were the colours of my first school!

    • admin on May 22, 2012 at 2:00 pm

      I’m guessing you enjoyed those school years, and you have a positive association to those colours. So maybe there is no surprise at your love for that colour combination at all.

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