Do Fancy Colour Names Sell More

Why We Act · 24 October 2026 · Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

A fancy name on a sweater or a jellybean looks like free persuasion. The best-known experiment found that one kind of colour name, the ambiguous kind, raised choice among students who had a moment to think. Vivid but literal names did not, and nothing in it measured a till. The cleaner field evidence is for a different strategy, descriptive names for food, tested in a single dining hall.

Answer to the question

Do fancy colour names sell more?

Not shown. In student experiments, ambiguous colour names such as Friendly green were preferred to plain ones, but vivid literal names such as Kermit green were not, and the preference vanished under distraction. None of the experiments measured sales in a shop.

Key takeaways

Miller and Kahn (2005) tested four kinds of colour name on 60 undergraduates choosing sweaters: ambiguous names such as "Friendly green" were preferred to plain ones, while vivid literal names such as "Kermit green" were not.
In their jellybean experiment, 100 undergraduates took the less common names, "Moody blue" and "Florida red" among them, more often than "cherry red" and "watermelon green", until distraction removed the preference.
In a third experiment with 143 undergraduates, seeing a swatch before the name lowered satisfaction with ambiguous names and raised it with unexpected descriptive names.
The 2005 menu study that The Choice Factory cites at pages 77 to 79 was corrected in 2017, and the corrigendum says two of its values cannot be established.
Turnwald and colleagues (2017) found that indulgent labels made Stanford diners 25 per cent more likely to take a vegetable than basic labels over 46 days in one dining hall.

In experiments by Miller and Kahn, ambiguous colour names, "Friendly green" and "Florida red" among them, beat plain ones in the choices undergraduates made about sweaters and jellybeans. Vivid but literal names did not, and the preference disappeared when students were distracted. The experiments measured choices and ratings, not sales.

Sweaters, jellybeans and distraction

Miller and Kahn sorted colour names into four kinds. A common name is plain, as in dark green. A common descriptive name points at something real, as in pine green. An unexpected descriptive name points at something real but surprising, as in Kermit green. An ambiguous name points at nothing in particular, as in Friendly green. These examples come from the summary Knowledge at Wharton ran when the paper appeared, since the full text sits behind a subscription.

Sixty undergraduates imagined ordering sweaters from a catalogue in which colour names of all four kinds appeared. Ambiguous colour names were preferred to common ones. Unexpected descriptive colour names, vivid as they are, were not. The authors took this as a sign that novelty is not enough: an ambiguous name also withholds information, and that seemed to matter.

A second experiment moved from imagined orders to a real choice: a hundred undergraduates took jellybeans from six labelled cups. Half saw common descriptive names, "cherry red" and "watermelon green" among them. The other half saw ambiguous ones: "Moody blue", "Florida red", "Monster green". The less common colour names were the more popular.

Telling the buyer more worked for vegetables in one dining hall. Telling the buyer less worked for jellybeans and sweaters.

Then the researchers distracted some of the participants with survey questions while they chose, and the preference for odd colour names disappeared. The authors read that as evidence that picking the unusual name takes some deliberate thought. A shopper who walks past a rack without looking at the labels is the distracted group. The experiment did not test a real shelf, so that comparison stays an inference.

Name first, swatch second

A third experiment had 143 undergraduates choose a sweater, some seeing a colour swatch before the name and others the name first. After choosing, everyone saw the full photograph and rated their satisfaction. Seeing the swatch first lowered satisfaction with ambiguous colour names and raised it with unexpected descriptive ones. Order made no difference for common or common descriptive names. The authors' reading is that a surprising name invites the shopper to work out why it was chosen, and that solving the puzzle raises satisfaction.

The authors drew on Paul Grice's theory of conversational implicature and the Gricean maxims behind it, which hold that listeners assume a speaker is being informative. Shoppers who meet odd colour names assume they were chosen for a reason and go looking for it, and the search leaves them with extra positive beliefs about the product. The authors report that their experiments support this account and rule out some alternatives, though the sweater results did not rule out an incongruity account, in which a mildly unexpected name is simply liked.

Barbara Kahn told Knowledge at Wharton what she expected beyond the data. The effect should work best for sensory products such as food and fashion, and probably fail in healthcare or financial services. A strongly incongruent name could backfire, and the effect might fade as shoppers get used to odd names.

These were her expectations, not results.

Menus and a dining hall

Richard Shotton's The Choice Factory leans on a different naming result at pages 77 to 79: a six-week cafeteria experiment on 140 students, in which descriptive names on a menu shaped how diners rated the food. The paper is "How descriptive food names bias sensory perceptions in restaurants", published in Food Quality and Preference in 2005, and it names food, not colour.

That paper carries a corrigendum from June 2017. It revised two tables, a figure and the method, correcting the design from six appearances of each item to four, and it says two values cannot be established because the raw data could not be retrieved. The journal's editors judged that the errors did not alter the basic conclusions and corrected the paper rather than retracting it. A result with that history needs independent support before it can carry weight, and a related test supplies some.

Turnwald and colleagues ran their test in a Stanford dining hall over one academic quarter of 46 days. The vegetables were labelled in four ways: basic, healthy restrictive, healthy positive and indulgent.

Preparation and presentation stayed the same, so only the label varied.

The restrictive label read "light 'n' low-carb green beans and shallots" and the positive one "healthy energy-boosting green beans and shallots".

The indulgent label won: "sweet sizzlin' green beans and crispy shallots" made diners 25 per cent more likely to take the vegetable than the basic label, 35 per cent more than a healthy positive label and 41 per cent more than a healthy restrictive one. The mass served was 23 per cent higher than under the basic label and 16 per cent higher than under the healthy positive one.

These labels name taste and texture, not colour. They tell the diner more, where an ambiguous colour name tells the shopper less, so the Stanford result supports a different strategy from the one that worked for colour names on sweaters. Both are labels, yet one adds information and the other withholds it, so they cannot be pooled into a single claim that names sell. The Stanford study also covers one dining hall and vegetables only, and the authors flagged that ordering from a menu without seeing the food remains untested. The direction agrees with the 2005 menu study. The size of the effect for any other food or shop is unknown.

A narrow naming rule

Two naming strategies are on the table, and they pull in opposite directions. Telling the buyer more worked for vegetables in one dining hall. Telling the buyer less worked for jellybeans and sweaters among students with attention to spare. The myth is that a clever name lifts any colour in any shop. The tested claim is the second one, in sensory categories. Every colour-name experiment described here used undergraduates and measured choices or ratings, so none of them speaks for shoppers in general or for sales.

What a colour does to behaviour once it is chosen is a separate question, taken up in [What Red Actually Does](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/what-red-actually-does) and [Why Brands Reach for Blue](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/why-brands-reach-for-blue), and the case for names that are easy to say sits in [The Brand You Can Pronounce](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/the-brand-you-can-pronounce).

Test each fancy colour name against its plain equivalent with your own customers before anything is printed, show a name open to two readings before the swatch and a surprising literal one after it, and keep the experiment to clothing and sweets.

Common questions

Do fancy colour names sell more?

Not shown. Ambiguous colour names beat plain ones in student experiments on sweaters and jellybeans, but no experiment measured sales, and vivid literal names did no better than plain ones.

Which kind of colour name did best?

Ambiguous ones, such as Friendly green or Florida red. Unexpected descriptive names such as Kermit green, vivid as they are, did not beat plain names in the sweater experiment.

Do descriptive names make food more appealing?

In one Stanford dining hall over 46 days, vegetables with indulgent labels were chosen 25 per cent more often than with basic labels. The 2005 menu study often cited for this idea was corrected in 2017, so the Stanford result carries more weight.

Sources

Miller, E. G., & Kahn, B. E. (2005). 'Shades of meaning: The effect of color and flavor names on consumer choice.' Journal of Consumer Research, 32(1), 86-92. doi:10.1086/429602

Wansink, B., van Ittersum, K., & Painter, J. E. (2005). 'How descriptive food names bias sensory perceptions in restaurants.' Food Quality and Preference, 16, 393-400. doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2004.06.005

Wansink, B., van Ittersum, K., & Painter, J. E. (2017). 'Corrigendum to "How descriptive food names bias sensory perceptions in restaurants".' Food Quality and Preference, 62, 379. doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.05.017

Turnwald, B. P., Boles, D. Z., & Crum, A. J. (2017). 'Association between indulgent descriptions and vegetable consumption: Twisted carrots and dynamite beets.' JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(8), 1216. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.1637

Shotton, R. (2018). The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy. Harriman House. Pages 77 to 79 cite the 2005 menu study.

Knowledge at Wharton (2005). 'Florida red or moody blue? Study looks at appeal of off-beat product names.' Summary of Miller and Kahn (2005); the experiment details and Kahn's stated expectations are taken from this summary because the paper's full text is behind a subscription.

Retraction Watch (2017). 'Correction to a 2005 menu-label paper.' Published 4 July 2017. Report on the June 2017 corrigendum, cited for its listed revisions and the editors' conclusion.

Stanford News (2017). 'Decadent-sounding descriptions could lead to higher consumption of vegetables, Stanford research finds.' Published 12 June 2017. Source for the label examples, the 46-day design and the selection and mass-served percentages.