# Design

Color Psychology in Healthcare Apps – Tips From a Designer on Improving UI

Red Rocket TeamJan 28, 20254 min read

In recent years, innovative technologies have been introduced into all areas of our everyday life, including healthcare. Clinics, health products stores, and medical services are increasingly developing their own applications. This allows them to always stay in touch with their target audience and attract more new users.

However, when developing a healthcare app, you have to analyze many factors. One of them is understanding the color psychology. This is actually a whole science that web designers have been learning for months. By knowing how people react to a certain color, you can achieve your set goals.

What should the color palette look like? The answer to such a question will help entrepreneurs to create an attractive and effective application interface aimed at conversion. In this article, we would like to take a closer look at what shades of colors are ideal for healthcare-related apps. Moreover, we have prepared a real-life case study for you.

Why Colors Matter in Healthcare App Design

It's no secret that people primarily perceive information visually. That's why advanced designers and marketers often use infographics instead of boring text. When we download a new app and open it, the first thing our brain analyzes is the color palette. Interestingly, people themselves don't notice how they perceive the product due to the color.

Now, imagine that you have opened a healthcare app that is made predominantly in a black color palette. How will you evaluate this app before you have a chance to use its functionality? Most likely, you will be unpleasantly surprised because black shades are not typical for the healthcare industry.

If web designers have been successful in selecting color palettes for healthcare apps, it is likely that such products will be in demand. Why is it so? Well, the right colors contribute to increased user engagement. Moreover, they also help in enhancing the usability of the app. For example, if important buttons were made in the same color as the entire app, it would be difficult for customers to find them.

In some cases, colors can even be associated with individual brands and apps. For example, many people associate the color black in the passenger transportation industry with the Uber mobile app. Obviously, the healthcare industry has many differences, so the color palettes for these apps will be different.

Why Are Certain Hues Like Blue and Green Staples in Hospital Color Schemes?

Most of the time, the colors are purposefully chosen in healthcare settings. What are the most popular choices for clinics and healthcare products? Surely, these are the hues of blue and green. However, many people still have no idea why these are the colors most often chosen.

Blue and its hues. Actually, blue is considered the most popular color in the world regardless of the industry. According to color psychology research, shades of blue are chosen by more than 40% of people from all over the world. Blue is thought to alleviate stress and lower blood pressure. That's why it is often used as the primary color for creating health-related applications.
Green and its hues. Green is another option among colors that represent health. Green refers to rebirth, balance, and healing. Feeling fresh and alive, the sounds of nature ease the tense mental atmosphere of a sterile clinical environment, allowing someone to take a mental leave. Studies have found that green tea can reduce anxiety and increase recovery time, making for a more restorative environment.

These colors create a comforting aesthetic and align with the goal of promoting wellness through thoughtful design. Using blue and green tones unconsciously prop up an orderliness and cleanliness feel that is important in healthcare spaces.

Building a Medical Colour Palette – What Colors to Choose and How Many?

Are you already eager to see what tones you should use in the interface of mobile apps from the healthcare industry? We would like to point out that the choice of color palette will determine the reaction of your target audience. Experienced web designers don't advise mixing too many colors and shades in one app. We have picked five basic colors that can be the main colors in your future healthcare app. Let's talk about them in more detail to understand why they should be in your app's UI!

1. White

The first color we want to start this list with is white. Just think about what you associate this color with. Most likely, you thought of cleanliness, order, sterility, and well-being. Many designers consider white to be one of the best colors for apps associated with the healthcare industry. It seems to add to the open, neutral feel and lessens cognitive overload so the other colors can stand out more effectively.

White, however, can be too much at times, feeling sterile and impersonal, so adding some green or blue can make it all more effective. When used correctly, white space makes a page more readable and helps to keep more of the whole page looking approachable and even calming.

2. Green

As we said above, green is often used by designers in health-related projects. The color green is the #1 healing color and, in most cases, stands for nature, balance, and growth. In healthcare applications, green is used to create an atmosphere of comfort and calmness.

Green tones can be particularly helpful in areas that are meant to calm people: meditation guides, appointment overviews, or mental health resources designed for mobile. Being able to reduce anxiety makes it a standard in health-based services.

3. Blue

When you think of colors associated with medicine, you probably picture blue and its lighter shades in your mind. Thanks to its ability to instill confidence and prevent stress, this color is used widely by telehealth platforms, patient portals, and symptom checkers. Psychologically, blue suggests safety and reliability.

Darker blues will give a feeling of authority and precision, whilst lighter blues create a peaceful, serene feeling. There are quite a few examples of mobile applications where blue is used as the main interface color. A well-known example is the MyFitnessPal nutrition monitoring application.

4. Yellow

Yellow represents optimism, warmth, and energy. It is not as ubiquitous as blue or green, but it’s critical for friendliness and engagement to be injected into healthcare apps. However, yellow can be used sparingly to create some important highlights, such as reminders or success messages, especially making the interface dynamic and approachable in a good way.

However, too much yellow will make users feel overly fatigued. Healthcare apps work best with softer, pastel yellows because brighter yellows run the risk of overstimulating. That's why web designers need to know how to properly work with this color during mobile app development.

5. Red

Mobile apps color palette often consist of red and hues. You might think that this color is totally inappropriate for this industry, but that is not the case. Remember the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) organization. Another example is applications that are related to blood. For example, clinics that attract donors to provide blood.

Red is psychologically setting a spark and boosts the user’s response time to emergencies. This is bold enough, however, to attract users’ attention to major updates such as missed appointments, medication schedules, or urgent health advice.

A Real-world Example of Designing a Medical Color Scheme

To help you better understand how color palettes affect users in medical mobile apps, we recommend taking a look at a real case study. Discover the design of the OneHealthy mobile app developed by Red Rocket Software experts. Briefly, this is an innovative app for finding the nearest clinics, medical professionals and the services you need. The colors used here include:

Blue.
White.
Peach.
Green.

As you can see, the homepage is a mix of blue and white colors. These hues are often used on the homepages of healthcare apps, as they calm and stress customers. All the important buttons and individual fragments are highlighted with light shades of blue, green, and peach colors. In this way, users can quickly understand the navigation and functionality.

Final thoughts

Medical color schemes can mean a lot more than you might think about them. Now you know that white, blue, and green are the best colors for implementing a mobile healthcare application. However, you should be able to combine the color palette of the interface, highlighting separate fragments with other shades. Today, you can find dozens of popular examples on the Internet to understand how you should use the psychology of color in healthcare.

Frequently asked questions

How does an app's color palette relate to psychology?

You can determine user emotions, behavior, and Perception by using app color palettes. Colors can stimulate reactions to concrete situations, bringing out feelings of calm, safety, trust, heat and vitality, balance, or healing. Colors in healthcare apps have a huge impact on user engagement, choose the colors that help foster safety and comfort.

What are the most popular colors in the healthcare industry?

Blue, green, and white are the most popular colors in healthcare because of their calming and professional associations. Blue is a color of trust and dependability, while green is often associated with renewal and healing. The cleanliness and simplicity of the UI, combined with the creation of order and space in the white, come from the white color.

Do web designers have to learn color theory?

Absolutely! A fundamental skill that every web designer needs to learn is color theory, particularly in terms of color for healthcare app design. Color theory helps explain how different hues work together, how they influence perceptual response, and how to compose complementary colors. Designers who understand concepts such as contrast, saturation, and color balance can help their apps stay aesthetically pleasing while also being functional.