How to specify colour in textiles
A colour on your screen is a promise you cannot keep. The mill dyes yarn, and dyed yarn does not have a hex code — it has a recipe, a substrate and a tolerance. Between your screen and that yarn, somebody has to write the colour down in a form both sides can check. There are four forms in use and they are not interchangeable.
1. A physical standard
The oldest and still the most binding: you send a piece of the colour you mean. A shade card, a dyed swatch, a lab dip the mill sends back for approval. Nothing beats it, because the argument is settled by two pieces of cloth held side by side under the same light. It is slow, and it is the only method that survives a dispute.
2. A licensed system
Commercial textile colour systems give every shade a code, and both sides buy the same fan. That is what the code is for: the code is not the colour, it is a shared index into a physical set somebody controls.
We do not ship one, on purpose. These systems are licensed, and matching against their names is not something a piece of software can simply include — so the studio does not print a code it has no right to print. What it does instead is keep the matcher open: it will match against any colour library, so a mill or a brand that holds a licence can drop their own set in and name colours from that.
If a buyer asks you for a code from one of these systems, the answer is not a screen colour. It is that system's fan, in your hand, under daylight.
3. Measured coordinates
The scientific form: CIELAB — three numbers, L*a*b*, off a spectrophotometer — with a tolerance expressed as ΔE. This is how quality control actually passes or fails a batch, because it is a measurement rather than an opinion, and because the tolerance is stated instead of assumed.
Two things about ΔE are worth knowing before you quote one.
- It is a distance, not a percentage. ΔE2000 is the current formula and it is deliberately uneven: it knows the eye forgives a shift in a dark navy far more than the same shift in a pale grey.
- As a rule of thumb, ΔE 1 is about the edge of what a trained eye catches with the two side by side, ΔE 5 is a colour a buyer will question, and past that they are two colours.
The studio uses exactly this arithmetic to name a colour. Every shade you pick is matched against its colour library by ΔE2000, and the match is flagged as approximate past ΔE 5 rather than presented as the colour. If you type a name over a colour and then drag the colour away from it, the name is dropped: past ΔE 22 it is no longer a name for that colour but a wrong label, and a wrong label on a spec sheet is worse than none.
4. A named library
The working compromise: a set of names everyone in one house agrees on, tied to fixed values. The studio ships fifty-one of them, named the way the trade names them — ivory, raw cotton, cream, ecru, light beige and oat down the off-whites, where “off-white” on its own would cover all six; fog, pewter, slate grey, charcoal and ink down the greys; and madder, saffron and ochre where the dye has a name older than the colour.
A house library is not a substitute for a lab dip. It is what stops the conversation before the lab dip from being a guess: “ecru, not cream” is an argument two people can have, where “off-white” is not. Choosing the set itself is a separate job — see how to choose a colour palette.
Handing the colour over
Whichever form you use, the file has to carry it.
| Format | What the colour becomes |
|---|---|
| ASE | Named swatches, grouped under the design's name, one float per channel — so it lands in Photoshop or Illustrator named rather than as loose squares |
| WIF | A numbered colour table plus a colour for every warp thread and every weft thread, RGB 0–255, read by weaving software |
| A4 CAD sheet | The design at true size with centimetre rulers, and the colours scheduled beneath it |
| Thread count | K4 B24 K2 W8 — the letters
are the colours, which is how the trade has always written them |
What none of this can do
No file can promise a dye. A screen emits light and cloth reflects it; a monitor's white is not the mill's white, and no hex code survives being dyed onto wool. Specify in the strongest form the job allows — a physical standard where it matters, measured coordinates where they can be measured — and treat everything on a screen, including ours, as the drawing rather than the colour.
Try it live: The Plaid Studio names every colour you pick against a fifty-one colour textile library by ΔE2000, says so when the match is only approximate, and exports the palette as named ASE swatches, a WIF colour table or an A4 sheet at true size.
Open the pattern software →Frequently asked questions
Can I specify a textile colour with a hex code?
Only as a drawing. A hex code describes light from a screen, not dye on yarn: the same code will read differently on wool, cotton and silk, and it carries no tolerance. Use it to communicate intent, then settle the colour with a lab dip or measured L*a*b* values.
What is a lab dip?
A small sample of yarn or fabric dyed to your colour and sent back for approval before bulk production. It is the physical standard the rest of the order is judged against, and it is still the most binding way to specify a colour.
What does ΔE mean?
A single number for how far apart two colours are, measured in a space built to match human vision. ΔE2000 is the current formula. Around 1 is the edge of what a trained eye catches side by side; around 5 is a difference a buyer will question.
Does The Plaid Studio support commercial textile colour systems?
It does not print their codes, because those systems are licensed. It matches against its own fifty-one colour textile library instead, and the matcher accepts any library — so a licence holder can match against their own set.