Black in Branding: Luxury and Authority
Black is read as authoritative, formal and restrained. Studies of weight, uniforms, clothing and understated luxury show which of those readings the evidence supports and which it leaves open.
Answer to the question
Black color psychology: what does black signal?
Black color psychology in branding is partial. Darker balls were judged heavier by sight in a 2010 study, black uniforms went with harsher judgments of aggression in sport, and wealthy buyers with a low need for status favoured understated goods. None of these tested a black logo, so authority depends on the cues around the colour.
Key takeaways
- Peter Walker and colleagues (2010) found that darker balls were judged heavier by sight and the judgment reversed when the balls were lifted; the study measured weight, not seriousness.
- Mark Frank and Thomas Gilovich (1988) found black-uniformed teams near the top of their leagues for penalties, and Gregory Webster and colleagues (2012) found more penalties in black jerseys across 25 seasons of ice hockey.
- Michael Slepian and colleagues (2015) ran five studies linking formal clothing with more abstract processing, mediated by felt power; formality was the variable, not black.
- Young Jee Han, Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèze (2010) found that wealthy consumers with a low need for status favoured understated goods; colour was not tested.
- Will Storr's The Status Game describes three games of standing, dominance, virtue and success, which gives a frame for why one colour can serve force in one setting and restraint in another.
Black color psychology rests on two separate claims that brand talk tends to merge. One is about perception, what a dark surface does to a viewer's sense of weight. The other is about status, whether black makes a brand look authoritative or expensive, and that depends on the cues around the colour. The perception claim has a clean experiment behind it from 2010, the status claim has indirect support at best, and a brand deciding on black should know which one it is leaning on.
The perception work is the brightness-weight illusion that Peter Walker and colleagues reported in 2010: people called darker balls heavier when judging by sight alone.
Black color psychology: what dark does to judgment
The authors could not tell whether this reflects a perceptual association or the fact that English uses one word, light, for both brightness and weight. The study measured perceived weight and nothing else.
A heavy-looking object is a natural neighbour of a weighty, serious brand, but that step is an inference. No result in this article shows that a darker logo is judged more authoritative because it looks heavier. Black color psychology can say that darkness shifts weight judgments in a laboratory, and that the link to seriousness is a hypothesis worth testing.
The most direct test of black and authority-like judgments comes from sport. In 1988 Mark Frank and Thomas Gilovich examined penalty records from professional football and ice hockey. Teams in black uniforms sat near the top of their leagues for penalties, and teams that switched to black uniforms were penalised more straight away. Two laboratory experiments suggest two sources, biased judgments by referees and an increase in the players' own aggressiveness. The authors relate this to a situated view of the self, in which behaviour follows the situation a person is in.
Gregory Webster and colleagues returned to the question in a paper published in 2012, using 25 seasons of ice hockey penalty minutes and the cases where teams changed their jersey colours. Teams were penalised more in black jerseys than in other colours, and the authors linked black jerseys with more aggression and discussed possible causes.
These are studies of uniforms in a contest, judged by referees. They measured how a colour changed judgments of aggression, and calm expertise was not what they tested. For a brand, the lesson is narrow: black can raise the sense of force in a viewer, and an audience that wants reassurance may not welcome that.
Formality as the signal of authority
Authority is often signalled through formality, and black color psychology leans on that research whenever it talks about serious or formal looks. In 2015 Michael Slepian and colleagues ran five studies and found that wearing more formal clothing was associated with more abstract processing, that putting on formal clothing produced a similar shift in some tasks, and that felt power mediated the association. The studies concerned formal dress as a whole. Black was not isolated, so they speak to a dress code more than to a hue, and a brand borrowing that finding should say so plainly to its own team. The wider research on clothing and thinking is set out in [what your clothes do to how you think](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/what-your-clothes-do-to-how-you-think).
Restraint and the quiet mark
Restraint is a second route. Young Jee Han, Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèze introduced the idea of brand prominence in 2010, meaning how conspicuous a brand's mark is on a product. They found that wealthy consumers with a low need for status favoured understated goods that only their peers would recognise, and that this pattern held across field experiments and market data.
A plain black object with a small mark is one way to be understated, though the paper did not test colour, so which of the two, the black or the small mark, carries the restraint is an open question, and the earlier article on [why black packaging looks expensive](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/why-black-packaging-looks-expensive) covers the food-pack evidence that sits closest to it. Signalling through price has its own account in [what the luxury label actually buys](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/what-the-luxury-label-actually-buys).
Four checks on black color psychology follow from the uniform, dress and prominence results.
1. Is the audience judging force or reassurance? The uniform results point towards force, and reassurance needs other cues.
2. Is the restraint carried by the colour or by the small mark? Test black with a prominent mark and with a quiet one.
3. Does the setting already signal formality? The clothing studies concern formality, and a formal setting may do part of the work.
4. Does black read as heavy on the pack, the screen or the shopfront where the buyer will meet it? Weight judgments came from objects, and screens are not objects.
Two games of status, one colour
Will Storr's The Status Game argues that people pursue standing through three games, dominance, virtue and success. Set beside that frame, the two bodies of evidence above fall in different places. The uniform studies concern force and its effect on how others judge, which sits nearest the dominance game. The understated luxury result concerns a buyer who wants peers to notice quietly, which sits nearer the success game.
The placement is our reading of the book against the studies; neither paper used the frame. It still explains why one colour can serve two different jobs. Black color psychology in branding is therefore not a single message. A brand that wants authority through force and a brand that wants authority through restraint are asking black to do different work, and the surrounding cues decide which reading a viewer takes.
Colour research as a field is still young, and its reviewers say that moderators and real-world generalisability need more study before strong applications are justified. For black color psychology, that leaves a plain position. The brightness-weight result gives a reason to expect that a black field can read as heavy, and a heavy reading is a gain for a brand that wants force and a cost for one that wants warmth. A cold or distant reading is plausible for similar reasons, although none of the studies here measured warmth.
A brand that wants authority from black color psychology should decide which of the two jobs it is hiring the colour to do, then test that reading with its own audience before the colour goes on a pack, a screen or a shopfront.
Common questions
Black color psychology: what does black signal?
Black color psychology links black with authority, formality and restraint, but the evidence is partial. Darker objects were judged heavier in a 2010 study, black uniforms went with harsher judgments in sport, and wealthy buyers with a low need for status favoured understated luxury in a 2010 paper that did not test colour.
Does black make a brand look more powerful?
Not by a single rule. In sport, black uniforms went with more penalties in a 1988 study and in a 2012 study of ice hockey. No study here shows that a black logo raises perceived authority.
Is black the colour of luxury?
The studies cited here support a narrower point: understated goods appealed to wealthy buyers who wanted only their peers to notice. Whether the black itself carries that signal was not tested.
When can black feel heavy or cold?
Darker balls were judged heavier by sight in a 2010 experiment. A cold reading is plausible but was not measured in the studies discussed here.
Sources
Storr, W. The Status Game. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Status Game.
Walker, P., Francis, B. J., & Walker, L. (2010). “The brightness-weight illusion: Darker objects look heavier but feel lighter.” Experimental Psychology, 57(6). doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000057 https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000057
Frank, M. G., & Gilovich, T. (1988). “The dark side of self- and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74-85. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.1.74 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.1.74
Webster, G. D., Urland, G. R., & Correll, J. (2012). “Can uniform color color aggression? Quasi-experimental evidence from professional ice hockey.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(3), 274-281. doi:10.1177/1948550611418535 https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611418535
Slepian, M. L., Ferber, S. N., Gold, J. M., & Rutchick, A. M. (2015). “The cognitive consequences of formal clothing.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(6), 661-668. doi:10.1177/1948550615579462 https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615579462
Han, Y. J., Nunes, J. C., & Drèze, X. (2010). “Signaling status with luxury goods: The role of brand prominence.” Journal of Marketing, 74(4). doi:10.1509/jmkg.74.4.015 https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.74.4.015
Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). “Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans.” Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95-120. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035