The arches in McDonald’s standard Golden Arches symbol are yellow.
The bright yellow arches developed from the yellow architectural arches used on McDonald’s restaurants during the 1950s. Their high visibility made them effective roadside identifiers, especially when the restaurants were located along busy highways and commercial streets.
Yellow became closely associated with the arches even though McDonald’s branding also uses other prominent colors. Red has been especially important in restaurant signs, packaging, and advertising backgrounds, which can lead people to describe the overall brand palette rather than the arches themselves.
The Golden Arches were adopted as a graphic logo in 1962. The color and simple curved form made the mark easy to recognize at a distance and easy to reproduce across many media. The symbol is now one of the most widely recognized corporate marks in the world.