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Colors To Use And Colors To Avoid In China. An Infographic.

By Dan Harris on Posted in Recommended Reading

Illuminant Partners, a public relations and strategic communications firm with a Beijing office, just did  a fascinating post/infographic, entitled “Illuminant’s Chinese Takeout:  Colors to Use and Colors to Avoid in China,”  describing the pros and cons of various colors in China.

I confess to knowing very little about the use of colors anywhere for anything and to being quite happy that color selection is not part of my job description.  Nonetheless, I definitely see how knowing the impact (good or bad) colors tend to have in China could be critical for certain businesses and in certain situations. That being the case, I recommend that you check out this post and the infographic contained therein (h/t to China Hope Live).

  • Mi Fu

    One interesting point: a black frame around a photo means the persons on the photo is dead. In Germany a black frame has the same meaning like in China. Is it different in the USA (and GB)?
    Confusing for everyone who just arrived in China: the range of colours in China is different from western countries.
    The skin colour of Asians is a shade of brown (in Europe), but yellow in China.
    The colour of the yellow river is yellow in Chinese, but ochre-brown in Europe.
    After vacation at the sea, the skin of a European or Chinese turns brown in Europe, but black in China ….

    this seems to indicate that the concept of brown does not exist in China, in fact the colour brown (棕色) does exist in China, but it is used less frequently than in western countries.

  • Magnolia Blue

    Don’t mix green with pink and white orange and red and blue are Taiwanese colors. Dont hand them out of your window, especially not as underwear in apartment buildings. Whiet means death so does black, red is blood, green in Muslim and Blue denotes Mongolia. Grey is OK though. Conservative values in China, not show off.

  • http://twitter.com/illuminantceo Simon @ Illuminant

    Dan, your note on our Chinese Takeout infographic was really generous and kind. You actually sent us a ton of traffic, with 478 of the readers of China Law Blog clicking through, as at this time of writing. From the grateful Illuminant team, thank you for your endorsement — we’re all after the same thing: more and better engagement with China’s people.

    Simon @ Illuminant