A Colorful Feast: Understanding the Impact of Colors in Food Packaging Design

Are curious about what colors you should choose for your packaging? Then this article is for you!

The color of your packaging plays a role in your consumers’ first impression of your product. It’s one of the first things they see on store shelves! Color psychology plays a big role in retail sales and in attracting consumers to your product. Pick colors that are associated with the flavors and consumer views of your product.

Let’s dive into the best colors to associate with different flavors!

The color green is associated with flavors such as lime, pistachio, matcha, green apple, and vegetable blends. 

Blue is associated with flavors such as salt and vinegar, ranch, chocolate chip, and berry varieties, such as blueberry. 

Yellow is associated with flavors like lemon, banana, cheese, and vanilla.

The color red corresponds with a variety of flavors, such as cinnamon, strawberry, raspberry, and red apple. Additionally, it is sometimes used to denote spicy or hot varieties of products. An example of this would be Flaming Hot chips!

Orange is correlated to cheese, pumpkin, citrus flavors, peanut butter, and peanut butter chocolate combinations. 

The color purple is associated with dark chocolate, grape, ube, mixed berry, lavender, and acai flavored foods. 

Consumer Views:

In food packaging, flavor is not the only aspect of an item that might influence its color packaging. Our brains associate colors with products that might have nothing to do with them, but we still link subliminal messages to the packaging. 

Green has been used to denote healthy and natural foods. It is also commonly used for vegetarian varieties of packaged foods. 

Red is an appetite stimulant and it makes sense when you think about how much the color is used in food marketing. Similar to what happens when we are hungry and the brain releases neurons, red enhances the appetite and stimulates a physical response. Additionally, red is associated with products tasting sweet and is commonly linked to sugary drinks and candy. 

Yellow is associated with “high energy serotonin-inducing foods”. Yellow is considered an appetite stimulant and makes consumers feel cheerful. 

Orange is commonly linked to healthy, filling foods. Additionally, it’s connected to affordability and convenient food options. 

Blue is associated with fun foods and is related to trust and dependability. Think about foods like Chips A Hoy! The blue packaging has nothing to do with the flavor of the cookies, but when you think about chocolate chip cookies, blue is a common color on the packaging. This is seen again in Oreo cookies and even refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough!

If you are unsure if a flavor has an associated color, check out Google or hit up your local grocery store!