Colour psychology? It's not quite that simple.

If you've spent any time on LinkedIn recently, you've probably seen one of those posts claiming that blue builds trust, green represents growth, red creates excitement and purple signals luxury.

They usually come with a colourful infographic and the promise that choosing the right colour could transform your brand.

It's a nice idea.

It's also a huge oversimplification.

Don't get me wrong, colour absolutely influences how we feel. Designers have understood that for centuries. But the idea that each colour has a fixed meaning that applies to every brand, every audience and every situation simply isn't true.

The emotion isn't created by the colour alone. It's created by the context in which that colour appears.

Take red, for example. Depending on where you encounter it, it could represent love, danger, anger, celebration, Christmas, a stop sign, a sports team or your favourite soft drink. The colour itself hasn't changed. What changes is everything around it; your experiences, your culture, your memories and the way the colour is being used.

The same is true of blue. It's often described as the colour of trust, which perhaps explains why so many banks and professional firms use it. Yet blue can also feel cold, corporate, distant or even melancholy. It all depends on the audience, the environment and the rest of the visual language surrounding it.

In branding, colours don't exist in isolation. They work alongside typography, imagery, messaging, tone of voice, photography, layout and countless other elements to create an overall impression. Remove that wider context, and a colour is just... a colour.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that famous brands somehow prove colour psychology works.

People often point to Tiffany's distinctive blue as though the colour itself communicates luxury. But when Tiffany first chose that shade, it wasn't already associated with exclusivity. The brand spent decades consistently applying it to exceptional products, experiences and marketing until people began to associate that colour with Tiffany. The brand gave the colour its meaning, not the other way around.

The same could be said of Ferrari red, Cadbury purple or John Deere green. Those colours feel meaningful today because of years, sometimes generations, of consistent use. Had another company adopted them first, we'd probably attach entirely different associations to them.

That's the point so many of these social media posts miss.

Strong brands don't start by asking, "What colour means trust?"

They start by asking, "Who are we? What do we stand for? Who are we trying to reach? How do we want people to remember us?"

Only then do they begin making visual decisions that support those answers.

Colour is undoubtedly an important part of branding, but it isn't a shortcut to building perception. It's one piece of a much larger system.

So, the next time someone confidently tells you that blue equals trust or green equals growth, take it with a healthy pinch of salt.

Because colours don't come with fixed meanings.

We give them meaning.