The Power of Colors: Creating Book Covers that Captivate

You’ve found a picture for your cover, but now you’re stuck changing the colors and none of the versions looks quite right.

Start with the colors the bestsellers in your genre already use. For most fiction covers, pick one main color with one contrasting pop on the thing you want readers to notice.

Make the title and author name contrast with whatever is behind them.

Book cover color palette: one main color and one pop

Your cover probably doesn’t need more colors. It needs you to decide what’s most important.

Say you have a figure standing against a blue background. A small red object can pull attention straight to their hand. But give them a red coat, add orange fire behind them, make the title yellow and put green lettering at the bottom, and everything starts fighting. Each part might look pretty good by itself; together it looks like crap.

The pop belongs on the thing you want seen.

That might be the main object, the character, or the title itself. It doesn’t need to cover much space. A little bright color against a mostly dark or muted image can do more than making the whole cover bright.

A lot of amateur covers end up with too many colors because the author keeps adding things from the story; the dress needs to be green, the necklace needs to be purple, and there’s an important sunset behind the castle (which also needs to be there, apparently). Pretty soon there’s no main color left.

Coolors and Adobe Color are fine for testing combinations. But a nice palette still has to work with your actual picture and text. Five attractive swatches aren’t a finished book cover.

Best colors for book covers by genre

The best colors for book covers depend on which readers you’re trying to attract. Start with your specific category, because “romance” or “fantasy” can mean a ton of different things.

• Thrillers lean dark and ominous. Keep the overall mood, then use a contrasting title or small bright detail to give the eye somewhere to go. Making everything nearly black can leave you with an indistinct blob.
• Romance usually leans warm and soft. But look at the books yours will sit beside before making everything pink. A sweet romance and a dark paranormal romance aren’t making the same promise.
• Fantasy and urban fantasy can use stronger color effects. Many urban fantasy covers blend two main colors in a gradient. Purple or blue behind a person can help separate them from the background; keep the character visible instead of burying them in magical effects.
• Horror can use darkness and a sharp contrasting element. You don’t need to show every horrible thing in the book.
• Sci-fi: check your particular shelf. A dark background with a bright focal point can work, but the colors still need to support the kind of story you’re selling.

Don’t choose a strange combination just because nobody else in your category uses it. Looking like you belong is useful.

Colors for nonfiction book covers

Nonfiction can be much simpler. A strong background color and clean text may do most of the work, without a complicated scene behind them.

Yellow is a good starting point for self-help and positivity. Navy suits business books where you want authority. Black can work for psychology or philosophy, especially if the design is simple enough to let it feel deliberate.

Orange fits creativity and startups. White works for straightforward how-to books or spirituality, with enough contrast to keep the text visible.

These are starting points, not instructions to make every business book navy. Check what the successful books in your subject are doing. The color has to work with the title and the promise you’re making, rather than just being your favorite.

Book cover color ideas when you’re stuck

Go to the Amazon bestseller list for your genre and screenshot 20 covers. Put them together and squint.

Ignore the little details for a minute. Which colors take up the most space? Where are the bright spots? Are the backgrounds mostly dark, or are you seeing lots of pale backgrounds with dark text?

Use that as your starting point. Borrow the general color approach without copying somebody’s cover.

Another simple option: make everything gray with one red element. That’s one of the approaches in my three book cover design layouts. It gives you an obvious focal point without needing to blend a bunch of competing colors.

You can test variations in my free online cover editor, which has hue, saturation, brightness and contrast controls. Try shifting the main color first. Then adjust how bright or intense it is. Keep versions so you can compare them side by side instead of trying to remember what looked better ten minutes ago.

Check your colors at thumbnail size

Shrink the cover down and put it beside those bestseller covers. Does the main object still stand out, or does everything merge together?

Check the title and author name against the background directly behind each one. White text can disappear into pale clouds even if the bottom half of your cover is dark. Change that area of the image, move the text, or change its color.

You don’t need to make every word HUGE so it can be read in a tiny thumbnail. The cover needs to have an impact at that size. Readers can read the title beside it.

Try the blink test from the 7 unbreakable rules of professional book cover design: show someone the cover for one second. Can they make out the image and tell what kind of book it is?

For another check, upload it to my free “Does my book cover suck?” cover critique tool. Use the feedback to find what needs fixing, then compare the revised cover at thumbnail size again.