How many colors should a letterhead have?

For a clean, professional letterhead, restraint wins. Two to three colors is the sweet spot, keeping the design sharp while controlling printing costs.

• Your primary brand color to carry the identity.
• One accent color for supporting details or a divider line.
• Black for body text, which keeps correspondence legible.

Adding more colors than that tends to create visual noise, competes with the message, and can raise printing costs. A tight palette also reproduces more reliably across different printers and paper stocks.