Colour Matching

Kyle@gs - January 10, 2023

Posted in Uncategorized

We all know that getting your colours to match your brand is important for consistency and there are several factors which could affect it for your signage or prints. If you find that your colours don’t match, this could be a result of incorrect colour matching. Below we’ve listed some reasons for issues with colours and what to look out for.

Colour Systems

Sometimes colours can be incorrect due to several colour systems that exist for various industries, e.g. printers, designers, painters. When logos are designed or produced, they could be made of up of any of the below.

RGB
CMYK
HEX
Pantone
RAL

Generally, modern printers use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) when printing your colours so it’s best to match to a CMYK from which ever system that you use. Changing a logo from one colour system to another doesn’t always give the perfect result either as Red with RGB may look vibrant on a backlit screen but the same colour printed may be look duller.

If you have brand guidelines, these should outline this breakdown however colour can also change slightly due to the substrate we might print to, as an example a blue printed on white paper will look different to the same blue printed on a brown paper.

Don’t lose too much hope, as some software such Adobe Illustrator have various swatch breakdowns which may get you closer to your colour codes.

Colour Conversion Websites

Several colour conversion sites do exist that will give you an indication of the colour match or breakdown, but these are not always an exact match.

Some sites that may be useful are:

Pantone to CMYK – Code Beautify or Colorbook
Hex to CMYK – Colorbook

These sites will get you closer but may not be perfect match.

As previously mentioned, some design software can also help with the colour breakdown but it’s always best practice to get a physical print of the colour and look at this in good light or where the print or sign is going to be viewed.

How we match colours:

We find the best way to match colours is to physically have an example of the colour you need to match to or use our colour selector charts. Colour selector charts or swatch books are numerous small blocks of colours printed (using our printer) and the materials we have available.

If the material can be laminated, we also have colour swatches that are laminated too as the finish can also change the shade of the colour.

We then take these colour swatches into good light or where your print is going to be and get a good colour match from there.

It is worth noting that not all colours can be matched 100%, as solid sign vinyl may look much more vibrant due to pigments than can be achieved with printing inks etc.

Colours can also look different from a distance, so always take a step back and remember where your customers are looking at your signs or prints from.

The colour on my screen or artwork proof doesn’t look right:

Sometimes the colour on artwork proofs or approvals don’t look right and this can be due to colours looking different on screens using an RGB profile to represent your colour.

Different screens, screen calibrations or input methods (e.g. VGA or HDMI) may provide different colours too. For example, if you have 2 different monitors or mobile phones and put them side by side showing the same logo or colour, you will notice a small variation in the colour between the screens.

When you need a logo for screens – it is best to change your logo to RGB.