Colors

Orange (Home Depot)

The Home Depot, Inc. is one of the largest retailers in the world with over 2,000 stores spread across the United States, Mexico, Canada, and China.

It uses the color orange in not only its logo, but also its buildings and even the aprons that its employees wear, turning the color into the signature color for the company.  The company is occasionally referred to as "Big Orange," which is a reference to calling IBM "Big Blue."

How It's Used

“Every October, some 50 former Home Depot managers, calling themselves the Former Orange-Blooded Executives, after the home-improvement chain's trademark bright orange color, gather in Atlanta to reminisce, chat about new jobs and pass around pictures of their children.”

"Clearly geared toward contractor customers, Home Depot Fuel is an 'XL' kind of place all around. A typical trip to the retailer's new orange-decked convenience store might go something like this: Pour a gallon of Joe into a Home Depot job site carafe, then grab a 52-ounce 'bubba keg' of soda for later. Fuel up the truck and take it—ladders and all—through the super-sized carwash on the way out...

"Fuel merchandisers were careful not to clutter up the 2,800-square-foot store, though, with the typical convenience store layout, Long said. Fuel offers about 3,000 products, about half the number of items in an average convenience store, he said. The store design also was tweaked to look more like a tiny Home Depot rather than a gas station, a la polished concrete floors and exposed ceilings.

"An orange-aproned crew runs the cash register and nearby sandwich station."

"On a recent Monday morning, Home Depot Inc. salesman Allen Perry pulled his pickup truck into a subdivision of two-story brick homes in Atlanta's booming suburbs. Dressed in jeans and a yellow polo shirt, he grinned widely as he gazed upon one of his biggest sales this year: a $170,000 set of aluminum panels used to form concrete walls.

"Mr. Perry doesn't wear the retailer's trademark orange attire. And he never mentions Home Depot to customers like Jason Hewatt, a contractor whose workers were busy preparing the aluminum panels for a concrete pour. As the two men spoke, it was obvious that little from their jargon-filled banter would be familiar to the typical Home Depot customer—a do-it-yourself home tinkerer buying a gallon of latex paint.

"But Mr. Perry, and hundreds of other salespeople like him, are part of the company's crucial next wave: conquering the lucrative building-supply market...

"Today, the CEO is on a mission to retool the company's image and improve his own standing with shareholders. Just as Wal-Mart used grocery sales to trigger a massive growth surge in the 1990s, Home Depot is pushing outside the orange box to redefine itself as more than a retail chain."

"The acceptance calls rang out in 24 corners of the country. In Plant City, Fla., a YMCA director felt his phone vibrate during a board meeting debating zumba dance classes. In Tulsa, a police officer exhausted from jumping fences while chasing drug dealers till 2 a.m. snapped open his phone. In Baltimore, a Home Depot manager folded his orange apron then and there in Hardwood Flooring.

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