When you decide to buy a café umbrella, the first things that you probably consider are its size and shape. As you know, these features are directly linked to the functionality of an umbrella. But what about the colour of an outdoor café umbrella? Does colour only serve an aesthetic purpose or does it have any practical value? Believe it or not, the colour of an umbrella adds much more than just decorative value.
The colour of fabric that you select for your branded café umbrella can have an impact on protecting your guests from the harmful UV rays of the sun. Colour also determines the amount of heat that a branded outdoor umbrella absorbs. Much like the clothing that we wear, darker and lighter colour café umbrellas draw and repel heat differently. They also play an important role when it comes to masking stains on an umbrella.
However, it might still prove tricky to choose between different colours ranging from earthy naturals to vibrant colours. Hence, we have prepared a guide to help you determine the best colour for your café umbrella.
Different colour schemes
To choose the right colour for your café umbrella, you need to understand various colour schemes. It will also help you in creating a beautiful design pattern that will attract customers.
- Analogous or matching colours: It essentially refers to three adjacent colours on the colour wheel that are used to create a cohesive design. For example, red-orange-yellow and dark blue-light blue-green form a matching colour scheme. These are the most common combinations when designing an outdoor café umbrella because they help you to stand out among the crowd. However, they don’t need to be warm or cool hues completely. Yellow-green-blue is a perfect mixture of warm and cool colours in an analogous colour scheme.
- Contrasting colours: This colour scheme is opposite to the analogous colour scheme. While the matching colour scheme uses adjacent colours, contrasting colours consist of colours that sit directly across each other on the colour wheel. However, colours are chosen in a way so that they balance and complement each other and don’t look jarring. Examples include orange and blue, yellow and purple, indigo and green. This bold choice of colour scheme works well if you want to install branded outdoor umbrellas at your café and want to draw customers’ attention.
- Cohesive colour scheme: Suppose you have installed multiple branded café umbrellas and you feel the need to mix it up a little. Then you can opt for a cohesive colour scheme. This colour pattern is essentially a process of pairing black or white with another colour to add a striking balance to your outdoor space. Under this scheme, you can have some dull as well as bright ones to spice things up. For example, if you’re using a white umbrella, it stands out beautifully alongside dark colours like navy blue or dark red. Similarly, black complements light colours like yellow or light green.
- Natural colour scheme: While most of the colour schemes mentioned above will help you stand out in a crowd, you can also opt to take a different route altogether by selecting a natural colour scheme. This scheme will enable your café umbrellas to blend in with the natural surroundings. For example, you can choose sky blue umbrellas or cloud white umbrellas to integrate them with the sky.
What umbrella colour you should choose for hot summer
With the sun on your shoulders, Australian summers can be really hot and exhausting. So you need to pick a café umbrella that can shade your guests from the harmful rays of the sun. Under the circumstances, darker shades like a black umbrella work well because they absorb more heat than other colours. They are also great tools to block UV rays and can mask stains easily.
However, since dark-coloured umbrellas absorb more heat, they tend to be warmer as the heat radiates off them. Light colours, on the other hand, can keep your outdoor space from becoming scorching hot spots as they reflect more light. They also render a clean, crisp and fresh look to your café.
So we would suggest that you choose the colour depending on your needs.
Conclusion
Now that you understand the different colour schemes, you should also keep in mind that you must select a colour that is easy to maintain and tends to fade less quickly. This is because we want your investment to last long. So the key aspect you should consider before buying an umbrella is how well each colour is likely to hold up in your environment. While darker shades could fade over time and you might need a replacement a lot sooner than you’d prefer, lighter-colour fabrics are more prone to soiling. So you must choose an umbrella that is made from good quality, solution-dyed material.
In addition, as a café owner, you can also customize the umbrella by printing your logo and unique design pattern. This little bit of extra branding can help you stand out from the rest of the crowd.
However, picking the best colour for your outdoor umbrella eventually comes down to personal choice. We certainly hope that you can use the above-mentioned tips to make an informed decision.
