A palette can look excellent as five large squares and still fail when used for a small menu label. Branding work becomes more useful when each colour has a job: body text, background, link, button or decorative accent.
Start with an actual page rather than a mood board. Place a paragraph, a small navigation item and a button on the backgrounds you intend to use. Then test the foreground and background combinations, including hover and focus states.
Contrast belongs to a pair
A colour is not accessible or inaccessible by itself. Its relationship with the surrounding colour matters. The W3C explanation of minimum text contrast describes WCAG’s usual 4.5:1 requirement for normal text and 3:1 for qualifying large text, with defined exceptions. Font size and weight matter when deciding whether text qualifies as large.
Passing a contrast calculation is a useful check, not a complete usability review. Thin letterforms, busy photographs and small type can still make reading difficult. Text over an image should be checked against the area behind it, not against an imagined average colour.
Give a difficult brand colour a different job
Suppose a pale yellow is central to the identity but disappears as text on white. Keep it for a background panel or decorative area and use a tested dark foreground. The brand can remain recognisable without forcing the lightest shade into every link.
Record approved combinations as pairs: dark ink on cream, white on deep purple, and so on. Include examples of combinations that should not be used for text. This is easier for colleagues to follow than a colour list with no usage guidance.
- Check links within paragraphs, not only isolated buttons.
- Keep an additional cue such as an underline where colour alone would be ambiguous.
- Test error messages and disabled-looking states deliberately.
- Review keyboard focus visibility against nearby elements.
Finally, open the design on a small screen and read a full passage. If you instinctively zoom, squint or lose the next line, revisit the typography as well as the palette. A strong visual identity helps people recognise a business; readable words help them understand what it actually offers.