What color is luxury?
We have sometimes asked ourselves this question, just as we would like to penetrate the emotional entrails of smell, texture, taste and other sensors of the physical world that our brain interprets as reality. What does luxury smell like? What does luxury taste like? What voluptuousness does luxury acquire? Our friends at Skift have also asked themselves, which today allows us a transverse conjecture: with what color is luxury defined in a hotel?
The logo of the fashion brands that we consider to be the most luxurious, such as Chanel, Prada or Dolce & Gabbana, is literally in black and white. Or, more specifically, black typography on a white background. Black is a symbol of power. For good and for bad. When we think of crime, our mind immediately turns to black and white. Or would we be able to judge Citizen Kane if Orson Welles had presented him to us in full color? Can you imagine Darth Vader in pink? Isn’t it intentional that Spielberg recreated his Schindler’s List in black, only colored in the mythical scene starring Roma Ligocka, the girl in the red coat?
According to design professionals, black and white express a sophisticated atmosphere. Gravidity. Seriousness. Black is timeless. However, when you look at the palette of colors in luxury hotels, often tending towards gold or blue as the primary tonality, the neurosciences discover another more powerful reason that justifies the paradoxical choice. The brain processes the information in a sequence that takes color as a primitive form of cognition. Color is an emotional sign that expresses identity, a sense of belonging. And at a speed that only an image can project, as we analyzed some time ago in this same forum: The 60,000 words of Instagram.
Color, rather than typography, is the most remembered visual component of a logo. According to countless studies of color psychology, blue is the favorite color of the majority of the world’s population, especially among males. This global preference, its ubiquitous environmental presence, means that blue is not perceived as threatening, conservative and traditional tone. Brands do not take the risk when they resort to a shade of blue for their identity, which is why many airlines and financial institutions use it today in their logos. It projects stability and trust.
The same goes for hospitality. Perhaps intuitively, the blue plaque in hotels conveys a much higher degree of reliability than the red plaque in tourist apartments. So much so that in Spain and other countries many owners of apartments have preferred to hide their red plaque, tear it out or even change it for another blue one that proclaims to the four winds: — you are staying in a blue ocean of tranquility and not in a red ocean where sharks lurk.
Gold and silver are other colors that are regularly incorporated into the logos of luxury hotel brands.
Hotel chains often opt for classic shades such as gold and silver in order to create a mature impression and a sophisticated spot on their customers. Like the precious metals they are, gold and silver generate an impression of wealth, prosperity and success in keeping with the character of the brand they represent. Thus, Jumeirah uses gold and blue in his anagram. Gold is also present in the logos of Conrad, Viceroy, Langham, St. Regis, Mandarin Oriental, and InterContinental.
Anachronistically, some brands break with these rules and turn squeaky red. Like the Virgin of businessman Richard Branson, who prefers to project an image of power, passion, and energy. Extreme adventure, as he himself symbolizes.
Six Senses, whose product is more linked to well-being than to hospitality itself, opts for cardinal purple, another indisputable symbol of power and deity. Pantone, in his letter, specifies that this color is the deep magenta, expressive of emotional balance and physical harmony. It is a color of transformation that is associated with feelings of self-esteem and satisfaction, apostate of old ideas and lover of new ones, impregnated with spirituality, contemplation, and imagination.
What do we find in Spanish brands?
Meliá opts for grey with the tilde on the final letter to mark her identity of Spanish origin. But grey in the psychology of color has a meaning of boredom, old-fashioned and even cruel. At the same time, it reflects maturity, intelligence, and some confidence, although not as much as blue. Grey is a point of medium luminosity between the maximum light of white and the null light of black. Eva Heller, the creator of the psychology of color, placed grey among the three least appreciated colors because it meant decrepitude, old age and a conformism not without wisdom. Picasso’s Guernica?
In the same tone, a little darker is Barceló’s logo. If before the signage tended towards navy blue, now a more contained, sober and senescent language is sought. Although with less obsolescence than that of Meliá. On the contrary, Riu Hoteles is expressed in red. Less intense and resounding than the Virgin red, the Riu pursues attraction, dynamism, and warmth, without the connotations of alert or danger that it would acquire in case the background of lettering followed the same pattern. Riu, with this red, aims to breathe dynamism into its guests.
Perhaps motivated by its imperfect visibility, the ethereal grey Eurostars logo has been reinforced after the rebranding imposed by the corporate managers of the hotel group. Grey is now more penetrating, more opaque, with slightly bluish dyes in its digital formulation. A clear vector of corporate integrity that is better attuned to the cobalt blue of NH Hoteles. Sincerity. Calm down. Infinite.
Fernando Gallardo |
