The arches in McDonald’s original 1950s restaurant design were yellow.
The bright yellow arches were chosen as highly visible architectural features on the McDonald brothers’ streamlined restaurant. Their color contrasted with the building’s red-and-white design and helped the restaurant stand out to passing motorists.
The arches were initially separate structures positioned at the sides of the roof. They later supplied the visual basis for the joined Golden Arches logo, which retained the strong yellow color associated with the restaurants.
Some accounts blur the original architectural design and the later corporate identity. The important distinction is that the yellow arches existed first as physical restaurant features; the familiar unified “M” came later as McDonald’s developed a standardized graphic mark.