How common are your school’s brand colours?

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How Common Are Your School’s Brand Colours?

In our survey of the 500 largest independent schools in the UK we studied the hues, shades, pigments and tints that form the visual landscape of our sector.

Strawberry, plum, coral, lime, sage, duck egg, gold – as you’ll see, we’re not short on variety, but with a prevalence of subdued blues it’s not surprising to see many schools use a secondary palette to add some vibrancy to their brand.

Navy is predictably the most seen shade in both co-educational and boys schools, with ocean blue (just a couple of shades lighter) most seen in girls’ schools. Gold is the most used accent colour – especially amongst prep schools – followed by orange and yellow tones. Explore the graphic and data to find out just how common your school colours are.

If you’re bored of your colour palette [read this article] you’re certainly not alone, but the most important thing to know is that your visual identity is not defined by your colours. Navy can be dynamic, burgundy can scream progressiveness, and fuchsia can be sophisticated – it’s how you use your palette that counts. There really is no such thing as a boring colour.

The data

The graphic below shows the most commonly used primary colours in the UK’s 500 largest independent schools.

38636 Colours Web Graphics Vis04

Colour key

Web Graphics2 02

71 Navy

68 Ocean

36 Yale

23 Crimson

23 Emerald

20 Charcoal

19 Gold

18 Maroon

16 Plum

15 Midnight

14 Burgundy

14 Cool

11 Chilli

9 Azure

9 Forest

9 Slate

9 Teal

8 Jade

8 Scarlet

8 Violet

7 Ash

7 Magenta

6 Amethyst

6 Canary

6 Dusk

5 Duck egg

4 Black

4 Carrot

4 Dumbo

4 Sky

4 Wine

3 Aubergine

3 Channel

3 Rose

3 Sage

3 Turquoise

2 Fuchsia

2 Grass

2 Pea

2 Pearl

2 Rust

2 Strawberry

1 Chocolate

1 Coral

1 Grape

1 Lime

1 Mauve

1 Mustard

1 Olive

1 Stone