How to Choose a Colour Palette for Textile Patterns

Guide · Updated 15 October 2026

Start with a role, not a colour

Rather than picking hex codes first, decide what job each colour will do:

• Ground / background — the colour that covers the most area. Usually the darkest or most neutral, since it sets the overall mood.
• Body / line — the colour that carries the main structure of the pattern (the main stripes in a plaid, the main petals in a floral).
• Accent — a smaller, higher-contrast colour used sparingly, to give the eye something to land on. Too much accent colour and it stops reading as an accent.

This role-based approach works across every pattern type — plaid, floral, geometric — even though the visual result looks completely different.

Contrast at repeat

A palette that looks balanced as a single swatch can look completely different once tiled across a large surface — small contrast issues get amplified by repetition. Two commonly missed problems:

• Not enough contrast between ground and body colours makes the whole pattern read as a flat block of colour from a normal viewing distance — the detail disappears.
• Too much contrast everywhere (every colour fighting for attention) makes the pattern exhausting to look at across a large repeat, even if each individual motif looks fine in isolation.

Preview any palette at the actual tile size and viewing distance your product will be seen at — a phone-case mockup and a bolt of fabric need different contrast levels for the same design to read well.

Building a colourway range

Once a design works in one palette, the fastest way to expand a collection is to recolour it rather than redesign it — keep the layout and structure fixed, swap the colour roles. This is how most commercial textile collections are actually built: one sett or motif layout, five to eight colourways, sold as a coordinated range rather than unrelated individual designs.

A shared colour system across a range also makes your shop or portfolio look more professional — buyers can tell at a glance that the pieces belong together.

How to specify colour for a mill or printer

A hex code is how a colour looks on your screen. It is not something a dyehouse can match: the same hex shifts from one monitor to the next, and dyed yarn never behaves like light from a screen. When a palette leaves your hands, every colour needs a physical reference from a colour system the mill already works with. Three are common in textiles.

Pantone Fashion, Home + Interiors (TCX)

The most widely recognised reference in fashion and home textiles. A code reads like 19-4052 TCX: the first pair is lightness (from 11 for the palest colours to 19 for the darkest), the second pair the hue and the third the chroma. TCX means the standard is dyed on cotton; TPG and TPX are the same colours printed on paper, useful for mood boards but not a dye standard. Do not send a mill the graphic-design Pantone codes such as 286 C: those are inks on paper, not dyes on fibre.

Coloro

A colour system launched in 2017 by WGSN’s parent company and the China Textile Information Center; WGSN picks its forecast colours from the Coloro library. Every colour is a seven-digit code such as 092-37-14: three digits of hue (0 to 160), then lightness (0 to 99), then chroma (0 to 99). Because the code is a position rather than a name, it tells you how two colours relate — a higher middle pair is lighter, a higher last pair more saturated — which makes it easy to step a colourway lighter or quieter on purpose. About 3,500 colours are shown in the physical books.

Archroma Color Atlas

A library from the dye maker Archroma: 4,320 colours on cotton and 1,440 on polyester, 5,760 in all. Each colour comes as an engineered standard with a dyeing recipe, so a mill that uses Archroma dyes starts from a known formula rather than from a swatch alone. Ask before you specify it: a mill working with another dye supplier will treat it as a visual reference only.

From code to cloth: the lab dip

Whichever system you choose, the code is the target, not the result. The mill dyes a small sample on the real yarn or fabric — a lab dip — and sends it for approval. Check it against the physical standard in a light booth under more than one light, typically daylight (D65) and a shop light such as TL84: two colours can match in one light and part in another, an effect called metamerism. Many brands accept a dip when the measured difference is about ΔE 1 (CMC 2:1) or less. Agree the tolerance with the mill before the first dip, not after.

In practice, write the system and code next to each colour role on your colourway sheet (“Ground: 19-4052 TCX”), use one system for the whole range, and send the mill the same sheet for every colourway.

Frequently asked questions

How many colours should a beginner plaid use?

Two or three. It's easier to get a strong result with a small, well-contrasted palette than to balance five or more colours at once.

What's a colourway?

A colourway is the same pattern design recoloured — same layout and structure, different palette. It's the standard way textile and surface-pattern collections expand without redesigning from scratch.

Should I match trending colours or pick timeless ones?

Depends on the product: fast-moving categories (seasonal decor, trend-driven apparel) benefit from current colour trends, while classic goods (upholstery, heirloom-style textiles) usually sell longer with more timeless, lower-saturation palettes.

Should I use Pantone, Coloro or Archroma codes?

Use the system your mill or printer already works with. Pantone TCX is the most widely recognised, Coloro suits teams that follow WGSN trend colours, and the Archroma Color Atlas pairs each colour with a dyeing recipe. Whichever you choose, approve a lab dip before production.