Colour is the last decision, not the first

Colour is the first thing a client asks about and close to the last thing we decide. Not because it matters least — it is often the fastest route to recognition — but because a palette picked before the structure exists has nothing to organise.

Roles beat swatches

A palette listed as six hex values is a set of options. A palette described as roles is a set of instructions: this is the ground, this is the surface that sits on it, this is the line between them, this is secondary type, and this one — exactly one — is the accent.

Roles survive redesign. Swatches do not. When the system changes, a role is reassigned in one place; a swatch has to be hunted through every file it was pasted into.

One chromatic decision, used sparingly

Most identities are stronger with a single chromatic colour and a disciplined scale of neutrals behind it. The accent earns its weight by being rare: a current-page marker, a focus ring, a list rule. The moment it becomes a fill, it stops signalling anything.

That is a hard sell in a review, because a deck with one colour looks restrained next to a deck with six. It ages considerably better, and it is far easier for a team to apply without supervision.

Contrast is a constraint, not a checkbox

Accessibility work done at the end is remediation. Done at the start it is just how the palette is built: every text-on-surface pair tested at its real size, focus states drawn rather than inherited, and nothing depending on hue alone to carry meaning.

If the only difference between two states is red and green, the state does not exist for a meaningful share of your users.

Photography counts as colour

A palette is never just the swatches. If the brand runs photography, the photography is doing at least as much colouring as the palette, and choosing warm imagery against a cool neutral is a decision whether or not anyone made it deliberately.

Which is also why filters are a poor fix. Desaturating an image to make it sit quietly in a layout is a way of avoiding the real choice — pick a calmer image instead, and let the photography run in its own colour.

A short test before signing off

Print it. Set the palette on the two or three surfaces that matter, look at it on a cheap screen, then on paper, then on a phone outdoors. Anything that only works on a calibrated display in a dark room is not a brand colour; it is a preference.