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The Color Psychology of Brown

By Kendra Cherry Updated on February 01, 2020

Notice how brown is used in the image below. How does brown make you feel? Do you
associate brown with certain qualities or situations?

According to color psychology, colors can evoke psychological reactions and influence how
people feel and behave. Brown tends to feel like a solid, earthy color, but it can sometimes seem
drab and boring. Light browns such as beige are often used as neutrals in design and fashion.
While they can provide a conservative and traditional backdrop, these shades are often
perceived as dull.

Illustration by Cindy Chung, Verywell

Color Psychology Characteristics of Brown

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Brown is a natural color that evokes a sense of strength and reliability. It's often seen as
solid, much like the earth, and it's a color often associated with resilience, dependability,
security, and safety.
Brown can also create feelings of loneliness, sadness, and isolation. In large quantities, it
can seem vast, stark, and empty, like an enormous desert devoid of life.
Brown brings to mind feelings of warmth, comfort, and security. It's often described as
natural, down-to-earth, and conventional, but brown can also be sophisticated.
Darker colors like brown tend to be associated with more negative emotions.

Brown in Feng Shui

In feng shui, a system of harmonizing your environment, each color correlates to a specific feng
shui element. Brown represents either wood if it's dark and rick or earth if it's light. Though it has
an energetic, nurturing quality, brown should be used sparingly in your decorating and be well
balanced with other colors to avoid a lack of ambition and drive. Blue is a good color to combine
with brown because of the earth-water harmony.

Brown in Marketing
Color plays an important part in the psychology of marketing and branding and can influence
people's perception of a brand's personality. It's more important to pick a color that supports the
personality of your brand than it is to try to instill certain feelings in potential customers since
everyone has different experiences and opinions.

In branding and marketing, brown is associated with reliability, dependability, and nurturing.
Popular brands that use brown in their logos and marketing include UPS, Hershey's, Cotton,
Edy's, J.P. Morgan, and M&Ms.

A Preference for Brown

While there are generalities we can make about colors and what people associate with them,
colors and our affinity toward them have a lot to do with our personalities, upbringing,
environment, and experiences.

One recent study on how adults perceive color according to the topic showed that more females
than males chose brown as their overall favorite color, but it was still one of the three least
favorite colors for both genders.
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However, when it comes to clothing, brown was chosen as the fifth favorite color out of 18 total
colors, including no preference. Brown was the second color choice for both men and women for
their living rooms and the fourth choice for their bedrooms.

Article Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within
our articles. Read our editorial policy to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate,
reliable, and trustworthy.

1. Costa M, Frumento S, Nese M, Predieri I. Interior color and psychological functioning in a university
residence hall. Front Psychol. 2018;9:1580. Published 2018 Aug 28. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01580

2. Tchi R. How to use the color brown for good feng shui. Updated June 29, 2019.

3. Bakker I, van der Voordt T, Vink P, de Boon J, Bazley C. Color preferences for different topics in
connection to personal characteristics. Color Research and Application. 2015;40(1):62–71.
doi:10.1002/col.21845

Additional Reading

Ciotti G. The Psychology of color in marketing and branding. Entrepreneur. Publiphed April 13, 2016.

Taylor K. What does the color of your logo say about your business? Entrepreneur. Published March 21,
2014.

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