Have you heard of the concept of ranking colors on Pinterest?
What are they and why does it matter?
I was as confused as you probably are. Surely, a single color can’t make all the difference?
Well, it turns out it does!
The ranking color is known as dominant color on Pinterest, and recorded in the source code of each pin.
When Pinterest decides what content to serve in the feed or search results, they look at a variety of different things, and one of them is how closely your pin resembles the ones already ranking well for the topic.
Fancy learning more?
Read on!
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Ranking Factors on Pinterest
I will cover the basics of how the Pinterest algorithm works in a free mini-course you can sign up for at the end of the article.
For the purpose of this article, I will keep it very short.
How the Pinterest algorithm works has evolved over time, and it is well documented on the engineering blog of Pinterest.
In there, you will find a document that references how they use visual embeddings to improve both search results but also related pin recommendations:
‘At Pinterest, we utilize image embeddings throughout our search
and recommendation systems to help our users navigate through
visual content by powering experiences like browsing of related
content and searching for exact products for shopping.’
In the technical article, you would find out that Pinterest, among other things, uses embedding similarity between your pin and other content that ranks well for the topic, to determine whether your content is a good fit for the topic.
For that purpose, the concept of dominant color is super important, as it’s one crucial part of the puzzle to determine whether your content looks similar to the top-performing pins.
So how does that work in reality?
When you upload a pin to Pinterest, they have to classify it and associate it with interest, so it can be recommended to other users who search for similar content.
Engagement signals like pin saves, clicks and outbound clicks then give Pinterest a pretty good idea of what’s popular on the platform.
And what’s the best way to keep people on the platform longer?
Give them more similar content to what they already like.
So being able to show similar content to what already works well is not good just for the users, but also for the platform itself.
You may ask: how important is this in relation to other factors?
I would say it’s not one of the top ranking factors, but using it will give you a competitive advantage especially for the more popular topics with higher competition level.
How to Use Dominant Colors on Pinterest
In my experience of nearly 10 years using Pinterest for business, I think the dominant color has more weight in certain niches than others.
If you have a food blog and want to rank for ramen noodle salad, a quick search will reveal what the popular pins have in common – they all have a picture of a salad in a bowl, with the sauce being poured over them, and some of them have a text overlay.
It would be impossible to mess this up as ramen noodle salads have more or less the same ingredients, so you won’t be able to make one in bright red that would stand out from the crowd (unless you use text overlay).
In travel and other niches, I think there is more flexibility since there is more than one way to capture a destination.
From my experience, in other niches you can very easily outrank top pins with a graphic that looks completely different, if it has good engagement signals and your account is very niched-down.
So what’s my advice?
1. Pay Attention to Dominant Colors
But don’t expect it to deliver miracle results.
It’s only part of the picture, and you don’t know what big part it will play.
Keep track of the color when you plan your content as your overall pinning strategy, but don’t let it stop you from experimenting.
Maybe a brighter shade of the same color would work better than the standard?
Maybe use more than one of the dominant colors you found?
You can only find out what works best for your specific account by testing different options.
2. Forget About Brand Colors
It’s great that your brand colors are blue and orange, but guess what?
Pinners don’t like them!
(sorry if that’s you, it was just random colors I picked out)
If you’re sharing your content and want to make sure it stays on brand, maybe Pinterest is not the right platform for you as it requires a lot more creative freedom.
3. Adding Color Artificially
Sometimes, your image doesn’t exactly match the dominant color that Pinterest prefers for the specific topic.
If your photo doesn’t hit the color palette, you can always increase the color match by using a text overlay in the dominant color.
You might wonder: what if none of the other images have a text overlay on them?
I’ve tested this myself and found that I can rank for a pin with text overlay, even though the top-performing pins do not have one. I’ve tested this in the travel niche and also in the beauty niche.
Now that you know how to use the dominant colors to your advantage, let’s look at some real life examples and how you can extract dominant color from a Pinterest search.
How to Find Dominant Color in Pinterest Search
You can extract dominant colors from pins in three ways: manually, using canva or using a tool like Pin Inspector.
Finding Dominant Color in Page Source
Search for your desired term on Pinterest and follow this method to uncover the dominant color:
- Left click on the white area next to the pins and choose view page source
- Click Line Wrap at the top of the page
- Hold CTRL + F (command + F) on your computer and type in dominant
- This will find the mentions of the dominant color in the text. You want to find the first mention, which is the dominant color for the first-ranking pin.
- Write down the code and check any other ones you might want to record.
Below is a sample of a dominant color extraction for a travel search term.


Finding Dominant Color in Pin Inspector
If you don’t want to do this exercise manually, you can also use PIN Inspector to give you all the color codes pretty quickly.
In PIN Inspector, go over to pins and type in your keyword. In the columns where it populates the results, there is one for the dominant color.
The good thing about PIN inspectors is the fact that it gives you colors for all the pins ranking at the top, so you don’t have to manually check each of them.
Finding Dominant Color in Canva
Finally, you can also simply screenshot the pin and drag it to canva, which will then let you extract the colors from the photo. Super simple and handy if you’re already working on your pin design there.


How to Use Dominant Colors on Pinterest
You should design a variety of pins for the same article, using a variety of dominant colors for the search term, because you don’t know which one will work the best.
Doing your pins this way increases your chances of getting your content displayed to more people, and when they interact with it, it will help to boost your engagement, too, since your pin looks similar to the top results.
At the same time, as I said earlier, it does not have as much weight in certain niches, so always review the top pins for your keywords to see what similarities they have.
Experiment using other colors that complement your image and make it look cohesive.
Need to Learn More?
If you want to learn more about success on Pinterest, I created a free simple mini course that will teach you everything you need to know about the platform.
Sign up for my newsletter below, and you get free access to the course!
Key Takeaways
Dominant color is a small part of the Pinterest algorithm, which helps the machine learning part of the algorithm figure out if your pin looks similar to the top-ranking ones for the topic.
It will increase your chances of your content being shown to more people.
At the same time, it’s only part of a puzzle, and likely plays only a small role in how well you can rank your content.
LOVE it? PIN it!

