Your restaurant’s colour scheme is an important consideration and will have a significant impact on your customers, how they feel, how long they spend in your restaurant and more importantly, whether they come back.

Different colours influence your customers in different ways, and represent your brand so it’s important to understand how your interior and exterior colours of your restaurant affect your business’s message. 

Yes Group have created a guide to go through different possible colours and colour schemes you could use in your restaurant, and what emotions and feelings the different colours can evoke from your customers.

Colour Scheme Ideas for Restaurants

Warm Colour Scheme

Warm colours: Red, Yellow, Orange, Soft Gold, Warm Amber

Warm colours tend to make you think of warm things like heat and sunlight, and usually evoke feelings of excitement and increase peoples’ appetite. Warm colors also look as though they come closer, and so are often used to make larger rooms feel cosier.

Warm colours are ideal businesses with high volumes such as buffets, restaurants with high turnover rates and fast food restaurants.

Red colours stimulate impulse eating, increases your heart rate and blood pressure so are ideal for establishments such as fast food restaurants which want to move customers in and out fast.

Combined with other warm colours, yellow evokes feelings of happiness and cheer to a restaurant’s image. Too much bright yellow however, can irritate customers which can be used for encouraging customers to eat and leave quickly such as in fast food restaurants.

Orange colours also encourage happy and cheerful feelings and are often used with yellow in non-luxury establishments such as cafes, fast-food restaurants or yoghurt shops.

Neutral Colour Scheme

Neutral colours: Ivory, Pale Yellow, Beige, White, Grey

Neutral colours are a perfect safe choice for restaurants. Light neutral colours like ivory, pale yellow and beige can be used to make small rooms appear larger than they actually are. The light neutral colours portray a calm and relaxing atmosphere and so are perfect for cafes, bistros and high end restaurants.

White can be used as an accent or secondary colour for restaurants, and when combined with a bright primary colour such as red, yellow or blue, they are ideal for fast food and fast-service restaurants. The white colour evokes feelings of cleanliness, innocence, purity and hope and the white colours allows the bright colours to pop out and be more memorable.

The darker neutral colours like grey can be used as an accent to portray a level of sophistication to your restaurant, and so are ideal for high end restaurants with fine dining.

Pastel Colour Scheme

Pastel colours: Pink, Baby Blue, Peach, Light Yellow, Magic Mint, Lavender

The pastel colour scheme is soft, light, calming, and much less saturated than the primary colours. They portray feelings of softness, openness, composure and calmness. 

Pastel colours also work well with the neutral colours to evoke feelings of sophistication, and thus are ideal for fine dining restaurants.

Due to the soft and calming nature of the pastel colour scheme, it is gaining more popularity in fashionable and trendy restaurants and therefore are perfect for cafes, bistros and chic and stylish restaurants.

Dark Colour Scheme

Dark colours: Dark Red, Dark Green, Dark Blue, Dark Purple, Black

The dark colour scheme is perfect for restaurants and establishments aimed towards evening and late dining, that like to create romantic and intimate settings. So dark shades and dark colour schemes are ideal for stylish and romantic restaurants, bars, clubs and VIP lounges.

The different coloured dark colours evoke different feelings, but do be careful of using too many dark colours as it can make customers feel a little too claustrophobic. 

Dark red can be associated with feelings of romance, willpower and courage. Dark blue is quite a masculine colour, associated with feelings of power and integrity while dark purple can represent luxury and power.

Black can signify power, sophistication and elegance but when used too much in restaurants, black can give customers feelings of sadness. So when using black to create that intimate evening atmosphere, try to combine the black colour with the other colours in the dark colour scheme..

Nature & Earthy Colour Scheme

Nature & Earthy colours: Verdigris Green, Olive Green, Brown, Reddish Brown, Dutch Orange, Ash Grey

The nature and earthy colour scheme represents colours that are naturally found in nature, and features mainly greens, browns and darker oranges. The nature colour scheme is often used in trendy and fancy restaurants.

Green is the perfect colour for health-conscious restaurants that want to offer healthy and fresh food options to their customers. Brown portrays feelings of comfort and stability so pairs nicely with green and other earthy colours.

Warm earth tones such as deep reddish brown, dutch orange and verdigris green work very well for high end and fine dining restaurants.

There are so many different types of colours schemes you can choose for your restaurants and businesses but whichever colour you choose, consider how you want to make your customers feel and what message you want your brand to convey. Then use this colour scheme guide to help you choose the perfect colour(s) to reflect this.

Looking for some restaurant supplies to match your restaurant’s colour and branding? Have a browse at hundreds of restaurant catering supplies of all types of colours:

• Restaurant furniture
• Restaurant gifts and decorations
• Front of house essentials for restaurants
• Restaurant crockery
• Restaurant napkins and table covers
• Restaurant kitchen items