The Perfume Making Podcast23 Mar 2025

The Emotional Palette - Using Colour to Connect with Consumers

This week Karen is joined on the show by Karen Haller, an expert in behavioural colour psychology and author of ‘The Little Book of Colour’, to discuss how colour shapes our experience of scent. The first thing any consumer sees when they interact with your product is the colours, and whether you mean it or not, the consumer will have an emotional response to that colour. In this fascinating interview, Karen shares her vast knowledge on the use of colour, how it makes us feel and behave and how you can use colour to maximum effect to influence your customers and elevate your brand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Karen tried a variety of careers before she arrived at colour psychology. She explains how an epiphany moment with a brown hat and teal feathers opened a whole new world to her.
Karen discusses how brands use colour, both its hue and saturation, to form consumers' preconceptions around the scent and taste of a product.
Whether we want to or not, we make assumptions on products as soon as we see the colours. Karen explains why this happens and the importance of aligning the colours of your brand to your product.
Karen outlines how you can use colour to add aspects to your branding that you might not otherwise be able to afford.

BEST MOMENTS

“One of the biggest myths of colour psychology is that all hues of the same colour give us the same response.”

“We see colour before anything else and colour is an emotion.”

“If your branding and ethos doesn’t align with your colours then your customers will be turned off.”

EPISODE LINKS

Karen Haller Website

The Little Book of Colour

Karen Haller Instagram

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Getting Started Guide

Artisan Perfumery Mastermind

ABOUT THE HOST

Fragrance expert, author, teacher and speaker; Karen Gilbert runs courses in the UK and online which demystify the secretive world of perfumery in a fun and interactive way.

Karen has inspired thousands of students to explore their olfactory sense and create their own personalised fragrances.

With extensive product development experience in both the commercial perfumery and the organic skincare industry, Karen is able to offer a unique insight into creating natural and mixed media fragrances for fine fragrance, room scents and skincare/bodycare products using commercial perfumery techniques.

Karen is also a certified meditation teacher and has a passion for helping people to create daily rituals that integrate scent with other modalities to shift state and increase your sense of wellbeing.

CONTACT DETAILS

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