Whether you’re a shrewd customer or looking to start your own venture, you can learn a lot from the world’s most luxurious brands. There are tells that distinguish luxury brands from others, signalling that clients can expect high-quality products and top-tier service. Here are two big lessons that everyone can learn from the best brands in the business.

The Power of Understated Colour Palettes

Many brands adopt bright, eye-catching colours to make them stand out. While this works for some industries, a lot of the biggest and most luxurious brands prefer an understated colour palette instead. Wealth whispers, as the saying goes, which is why a lot of luxury brands opt for quiet sophistication and professionalism instead.

This leads them to certain colours, most often neutral or subtle shades that might not stand out in a crowd but don’t need to, because their refined clientele is already on board. These colour palettes are also used in digital industries like iGaming, which use them because they are inspired by casino opulence. This is best seen with table game live streams like Blackjack at Paddy Power, which are replete with neutral colours and metallic accents. Many of its streams feature a sleek black set with gold or silver lining and a splash of colour for the table felt – either green, blue or red. These kinds of live streams can be contrasted against game shows also found in the iGaming industry, which are free to explore more playful, gaudy set pieces.

Having mentioned metallic colours, we should also address their role in luxury brands. Discounting watches for obvious reasons, a lot of luxury brands include metallic logos. This is best seen with handbags from Gucci or Versace, or Gucci’s signature horse-bit shoe decoration. Using metallic accents keeps things neutral but introduces some shine, especially under sunlight. They also have a strong association with precious metals and luxury lifestyles.

Exclusivity Sells to Loyal Audiences

By now, you’ve probably stumbled across successful and unsuccessful attempts to build an audience online. The internet has made audience building easier than ever before, especially as it allows those with niche interests to find each other. By fostering a dedicated community, brands aim to get natural word-of-mouth marketing from them and guarantee repeat business. Luxury manufacturers like Rolls-Royce have already achieved this – they are famous for never advertising to the general public because they don’t need to.

Luxury brands add an extra element to this strategy by promoting exclusivity. Once a community has formed around a business, scarcity makes them feel like they are part of something special that everyone else is missing out on. These companies often make products scarce, by only making a select number of products and even buying back products from secondary markets to restrict access.

There is a notable example here, however, and that’s watches. Swiss watchmakers like Rolex slowly craft products with very specific materials, naturally creating scarcity as each watch isn’t a carbon copy of other products in the line. While Rolex can probably make their products a lot faster nowadays, that wasn’t always the case. Their reputation for scarcity and painstaking, hand-crafted quality established themselves as a luxury brand over the years, and why Rolex watches can justify pricing for a more refined client base.

When demand outpaces supply, a product or service can become a status symbol. This becomes its marketing strategy, as the exclusive audience takes pride in belonging to that brand. Then, from the outside, some people want to enter that exclusive client group and will gravitate towards the brand too.

By understanding these two lessons, you should be able to tell a luxury brand just by the colour palettes they use and how scarce they are. Of course, these approaches work best when backed by a well-established business that is often decades (if not hundreds) of years old. While part of a larger formula, these tips can help you find better brands to shop with or help you refine your own business ideas.