How to Choose Your Church’s Brand Colors (The Right Way)

When it comes to church branding, we tend to obsess over every detail – every curve in a logo, every pixel of a design. But when it’s time to pick brand colors?

“Oh, this shade of blue looks cool.”

Now, I’m not here to shame anyone. Picking brand colors can be tough. But I believe it doesn’t have to be arbitrary, and it certainly doesn’t have to be based solely on personal preference.

Recently, I asked our Instagram community how their church chose its brand colors. The most popular answer? Preference. The second? Value-based. The least popular? Location-based.

That last one? That’s my preferred method.

My team has recently developed a brand new (and free!) tool for you to use to generate brand colors for your church. I’m eager to show it to you, but first we need to establish our method.

Let’s dive in.

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Let Your Community Choose Your Colors For You

Not literally, of course. But conceptually. Instead of choosing colors in a vacuum, what if your church’s location - your building, your city, your neighborhood - nominated the brand colors?

This idea of “congruency” is foundational in brand design. Think of how a Starbucks café looks and feels like their app. The same is true of an Apple Store. From the tones to the textures, every aspect is aligned. That’s brand congruency.

Now, imagine your church. Maybe you've picked an orange like #526865 because it looked great online. So you stick it on the wall. You use it in your slides. But does it feel like your church?

What if, instead, the colors of your building - the paint, the pulpit, the stained glass, the chairs - set the tone for your visual identity?‍

Garden City Church: A Colors Case Study

We recently visited Garden City Church in Beaumont, California. I took photos with only the phone in my pocket to capture their space. We then used our brand-new tool (I’ll share it in a moment) to extract color palettes directly from those photos.

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The result? A brand presentation that actually feels like Garden City. Not just visually appealing, but congruent. Aligned with the space where ministry happens week after week.

You’ll see in this first mockup, a color scheme that resonates with the name of the church. This image of their worship space resulted in a palette made of blues and earth tones. Synonymous with the Garden City.

To take it in a different direction, the folks at Garden City directed my attention to their pulpit. It’s a hand-made piece by a congregant in the community, with the church logo front and center. So I reached for my phone, framed it up, and took a close-up photo of it.

From that single photo, we generated an entirely new, mission-anchored color palette. Warm wood tones, earthen colors, and heavenly blues – all derived from a meaningful object inside their sanctuary.

That’s the power of place-based branding.

What If You Don’t Own Your Space?

Some churches rent. Some are in temporary spaces. So what then?

Zoom out. Capture the community.

Let’s say your church is planted in Palm Springs. You’re not here by accident, God has rooted you here in this place. Let your brand speak to that.

While visiting the area, I made sure to snap a disposable photo of a California fan palm – Palm Springs’ only native palm species. That photo generated a color palette of greens, desert reds, and a mint tone that screamed 1950s mid-century modern, all reminiscent of the architecture in Palm Springs.

These colors are now more than aesthetics – they’re local theology. They say: “We’re planted here. We serve here. And our brand reflects that.

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The Tool: colors.nucleus.church

This whole idea sparked back in 2018 when we launched Storytape (now part of Nucleus Media). On that site, we auto-generated page colors based on the stock video thumbnails. The colors weren’t chosen, they were derived from the content itself.

Now we’ve brought that concept to churches – for free.

You can visit colors.nucleus.church right now and upload a photo from your church building, sanctuary, pulpit – or even your neighborhood. My friend and co-worker Alex recently uploaded an image of the beehives they have on their church property. The result is a color palette to match the season and spirit of the church. Blooming in summertime, rooted in a rural place.

This tool is 100% free.

It pulls out multiple palettes from your photo, gives you HEX codes, and even lets you adjust vibrancy, lightness, and saturation. Whether you're using it for a full rebrand from scratch or a seasonal color cycle, this tool is sure to help you make meaningful change.

The Key To A More Meaningful Brand

When your church brand colors:

• Look good,
• Align with your mission and values,
• And originate from your space or community,

You have something truly meaningful. Not just a logo or a brand, but a story. And a story that echoes the greatest story ever told.

So go ahead and give this new tool a spin. Upload a photo. See what emerges. Your next brand palette might be hiding in plain sight – in the very walls of your church or on the streets of your neighborhood.

Try it now at colors.nucleus.church.

Want a follow-up post on church logo design? Let me know in the comments.

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