If you are a regular reader of my blog or my LinkedIn posts, you’ll probably know I have been questioning the claim that color differences confuse consumers and negatively impact sales. And guess what: I experienced myself that this can indeed be the case! But before you say, ” I told you so, let’s look at what kind of color difference I’m talking about… It might be very different from what you want it to be…
CONTENTS: Confusing color differences | Not really confusing color differences | Fear sells | If it were true… | Why is this important? | PS: Smallest Actionable Difference
Originally published: 01/02/2026 – Last update: 01/02/2026
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the bottle of olive oil I use for cooking was almost empty. So when shopping, I went to the aisle with the olive oils and looked for the ‘right’ bottle. I had a clear image of the label and bottle in my head, but something strange confused me. The color I saw in the shop wasn’t right! The color of the cap, specifically… Which was clearly red with the bottle I had in my kitchen, but all bottles of the brand I wanted to buy had a yellow cap. What was happening??? I checked the rest of the bottle: same brand, same type of olive oil, so enough boxes were ticked to assume it was the right one (more about that in this article), and I took a leap of faith and bought the bottle.
When I got home, I checked the old bottle, and indeed it had a red cap. And the new one is yellow. Very confusing! And guess what: the bottle’s seal is yellow, and when you break it, a nice red cap appears…
So, here it is, the final proof that color differences can confuse consumers. But we’re talking about entirely different colors: red and yellow are around 50 dE00 apart, not just a few dE00! And a 50 dE00 difference, that’s really confusing: if what you thought was red suddenly is yellow, your brain will raise a flag. You need to investigate further: is it a new design, or another variation of the product? Is there another reason?
Not really confusing color differences
To show the difference, below are real-life color differences that are not perceived as confusing. Probably not noticed by consumers, only by print professionals and print buyers. And even then, only on condition that the ‘print’ part of their brain is activated.
There are also many factors influencing color perception, not least the third dimension in real life: if a box is shifted slightly, the light might fall differently on it, causing a color shift. But hey, don’t panic! Our brain is lazy and will automatically correct for that. It’s only when you specifically look for color differences that you will be able to notice tiny color differences.
Fear sells
So why do you read all those posts on LinkedIn about the need to avoid even tiny color differences, because they could harm sales? Well, that’s easy: the people who are pushing that message are selling color control systems (hard- and software) or color-related services. They want to make money. And what’s the best way to convince people to buy something: fear. In this case, the fear of losing sales.
For the record, I have nothing against reliable tools that keep color on a press consistent within a reasonable margin. This will increase efficiency, reduce costs, and therefore increase profit margins. But what I do oppose is fear-mongering as a sales argument! Due to their fear-mongering, print buyers might become overly sensitive to even tiny color differences that will have absolutely no effect on sales. Having to act on that costs printers a lot of effort and therefore money, which severely cuts their already relatively thin margins.
If it were true…
If you’re still not convinced, enlighten me: how can you reconcile that the print buyer of a brand is complaining about a 2 dE00 and fuming that this will hurt sales, while on the other hand the division that designs new packaging, including those at a higher level approve these new designs, can change the primary brand color to another color in the same color category, but over 10 dE00 apart?
And this is the case with both Oreo and Dallmayr, as shown in the pictures I showed you above. In the case of Oreo, even 1,5 years after the launch of the new logo, I still see both the old and the new logos in shops! BTW: there are only a very few articles about that Oreo logo redesign, even though the blue is over 10 dE00 different, only a very few people noticed the change. I’m one of the very few.
Oh, and one last example: that iconic Coca-Cola red? Did you know that in the holiday season, around Christmas, they make that red a little bit darker… Would they deliberately do that if a few dE00 color difference would hurt their sales?
Why is this important?
When designing product packages, you have to make sure they’re easy for consumers to identify and grab from an overloaded shelf. Slight differences are not really an issue, a few dE00 color differences will not impact identifying the product or the sales, as real-life cases show. But if you have the situation I described above, where the cap of a bottle looks completely different, yellow instead of red, that will confuse consumers.
Vendors selling color solutions should focus on improving production efficiency, that’s what their tools are for. But do not focus on fear-mongering towards the brand owners, this practice is hurting printing companies. Badly. Please stop doing that: hurting your customers is a bad business practice.
PS: as I stated in a previous article, we should start investigating what the smallest actionable color difference (SAD) is. When will people stop buying a product, due to a color difference? The industry has always been focused on the just noticeable difference (JND) and just acceptable difference (JAD), but these are from a color science and print production perspective, they do not take into account human behavior while shopping. And if my gut feeling is right, the SAD will be much bigger than the JAD!
And if you would look to refer to that (in)famous quote, the mother of all color myths, that color enhances brand recognition by 80%: that’s about newspaper advertising, when comparing color ads to black and white ads… That quote is not about tiny color differences.
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