BRANDISAVERB — BRAND INTELLIGENCE FOR CREATIVE STUDIOS

NewsletterJune 2026

We performed a hex audit and your brand color is probably blue.

Kids are now playing this game of spotting a yellow car, because any non-neutral car has become remarkable.

iSeeCars analyzed over 20 million cars: greyscale vehicles went from 60% of the market in 2004 to 80% today. A UK study tracking 7,000 everyday objects from 1800 to 2020 found that very same drift.

Brands followed. The 2010s and early 2020s brought "blanding" — logos stripped to flat sans-serifs, palettes reduced to safe neutrals. Yes, blame the millennials — we genuinely thought millennial grey was the road less travelled.

Following years of minimalist compression, brands are now remembering that color is one of the most powerful tools to possess.

So where do brand guidelines actually land right now? The team at Corebook.io scanned 500 of them and extracted every hex code.

11,595 color instances. 5,337 unique values. Here's what they say.

11,595

Total color instances

5,337

Unique colors found

500

brand guidelines analyzed

01WHAT BRANDS REACH FOR

Blue leads. Warm hues are closer than you'd expect.

Blue leads.

Blue accounts for 16.7% of all color usage — the single most-used hue family. The color of trust, tech, and playing it safe.

Warm colors are closer than you'd think.

Red, orange, and yellow combined account for 27.5% of usage. Cool hues reach 38.2% — but strip out blue and warm hues are competitive.

Purple is rare, but committed.

Only 3.7% of all instances fall in the purple/violet range. When a brand commits to it, they go all in. Looking at you, Milka.

02SATURATION & LIGHTNESS

Most brands go vivid. Muted is the road less taken.

Most brands go vivid.

42.8% of all color instances are highly saturated (70–100%). The 'blanding' era may dominate the conversation, but the data shows brands still reach for intensity.

Mid-tones carry the workload.

30.8% of instances sit in the 40–60% lightness band — the functional range where colors are visible, readable, and versatile without commanding attention.

Muted tones are the road less taken.

Only 13.4% fall in the muted 10–40% saturation range. The complex, dusty hues are genuinely rare.

03IDENTITY AT THE HEX LEVEL

At the exact value, brands are distinct.

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74.7% of unique colors appear in only one guideline.

Of the 5,337 unique hex values, three-quarters belong to a single brand. Convergence happens at the hue family level — not at the precise value.

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We are 72.2% chromatic.

If the broader world is greying out, brand guidelines are resisting. 72.2% of all color instances are chromatic, not neutral.

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The neutrals still anchor.

White (9.0%), grey (6.7%), and black (4.4%) together make up roughly a fifth of all instances — the supporting cast every palette needs.

Hue Family Breakdown

Blue

16.7%

Red

10.5%

Teal / Cyan

10.1%

White

Orange

Yellow

Green

7.7%

Grey

6.7%

Pink / Magenta

6.5%

Black

4.4%

Purple / Violet

3.7%

Saturation Distribution

24%

13%

20%

43%

Achromatic

0–10%

Muted

10–40%

Moderate

40–70%

Vivid

70–100%

Lightness Distribution

11%

18%

31%

17%

24%

Very dark

0–20%

Dark

20–40%

Mid

40–60%

Light

60–80%

Very light

80–100%

Top 15 Most-Used Colors

#ffffff

#000000

#046a38

#da291c

#e7e8e8

#f1f1f1

#171d1a

#20372e

#c6c7bb

#d15334

#be4b9a

#f6c944

#2a1c7c

#0a0bc4

#372dff

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How does your brand compare?

Primary

Secondary

Accent

← Paste your brand's hex codes on the left and see where they land in the 11,595-color dataset.

How we got here

The data in this issue comes from Corebook.io, a platform where design and creative teams host their online brand guidelines. 500 guidelines were scanned and all hex codes extracted. 3-character shorthand codes (e.g. #000) were expanded to their 6-character equivalents for analysis.

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BRANDISAVERB

This newsletter is put together by Brandisaverb™ — a platform for research, insights, and discussion on branding and visual identity.