How to Read Your Color References?

PANTONE Formula Guide - for printers & color manufacturers

The printing process traditionally uses four colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, which is known as CMYK printing. To access a wider range of colors in print, a fifth PANTONE color is added.

To create this PANTONE color for printing, we need the color formula. The PANTONE Formula Guide is used by printers and color manufacturers and contains all the formulas to produce these PANTONE colors.

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How do I read my Formula Guide?

At the beginning of the Formula Guide are a series of base colors. All subsequent colors in this guide are made up of formulas of these base colors in combination with a transparent medium.

Next to each color is a standardized color code, for example, 2001 U. The first four digits are the standardized code for that particular color, and the U or C indicates whether the paper it is printed on is coated (C) or uncoated (U). If you already know the color identification number, you can use the included index to find the page number in the guide for that color.

In addition, there is a series of formulations printed next to the color, showing the ratio of each base color in combination with a transparent medium. All these values add up to 100, so each value shows the percentage of the base color within the total formula.

How do I communicate my chosen color to the print shop?

The Solid Chip Book contains the same colors as the Formula Guide, but these are available as removable swatches. These swatches can be detached and used as a communication tool or in mood boards. The Formula Guide, Solid Chips, Metallics & Pastels all come from the same color system and are available both as color fans and as removable chip books. The books show the color code, but the Formula Guide must be used to get the color formula.

For printers who regularly print with the same colors or need to produce colors quickly, a color scale is used, which immediately provides information about which basic colors need to be added for the desired color formula.

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How to Read the PANTONE Color Bridge - for Designers

Designers use the PANTONE Color Bridge to coordinate their designs with the printed product at the print shop. The guide displays two versions of each color reference. The first shows the corresponding Pantone color (a smaller reference than that shown in the Formula Guide; furthermore, the color formula is not included here), and the second shows the closest color match that can be achieved with the four-color CMYK printing process, should one decide to use only standard CMYK printing. For some colors, the difference is small, while for other colors there is a clear visual difference between the original PANTONE color and the version that can only be achieved with CMYK colors. You can share the CMYK formula (for example, 0 49 84 0) included here with the print shop and have the required color produced.

When designing digitally, each color also displays its corresponding RGB values (Red, Green, Blue) that you can use when creating content in your chosen design software. For example: R 249 G 145 B 69. The HTML code used in web design, such as FA04BE, is also included. These values, in contrast to CMYK, are exact and not merely an approximation.

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PANTONE Plastics Range

The PANTONE Plastics Products use the same color system as the Graphics products, for example 298C. C stands for Coated, which means the colors are applied to a coated surface.

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PANTONE Fashion, Home + Interiors series

The Fashion, Home + Interiors range includes the PANTONE FHI Guide and Specifier, as well as the Cotton, Polyester and Nylon ranges, printed on the corresponding fabric type.
All products within the Fashion, Home + Interiors range use a six-digit code to define the color number, and a suffix (e.g., TCX, TPG, TPM) describing the material printed on. Within the six-digit code 11-0700 TPG, the first two digits define the lightness level of the color (between 11 and 19). The second pair of numbers indicates the hue. In total, there are 65 different hues, including 00, which represents the neutral point. The third sequence of digits represents the chroma level of the color, with 65 chroma levels, starting with 00 neutral.

PANTONE Fashion, Home + Interiors Code Suffixes

When the same color appears in different FHI products, it shows the same six-digit code, with only the suffix changing depending on the material. The choice of guide depends on the material you are designing for and the size of the color swatch you need to reference, whether it's for cosmetics, fashion, product design, or home furnishings.

TPX = Textile Paper, indicating that the color reference is printed on paper. This was replaced by TPG when PANTONE updated their ink formulations to a more eco-friendly alternative.

TPG = Textile Paper Green, indicating that the color reference is printed on eco-friendly paper. The FHI Color Guide & Specifier uses this suffix.

TPM = Textile Paper Metallic, indicating that the metallic color reference is printed on paper. This is used for the FHI Metallic Shimmers Guide and Specifier.

TCX = Textile Cotton Extended, indicating that the color reference is printed on cotton. This suffix is used for the entire PANTONE FHI Cotton range, including the Cotton Passport, Planner, Chip Set, and Swatch Library, all of which show the same colors in different swatch sizes.

TSX = Textile Synthetics Extended, indicating that the color reference is printed on polyester, as with the Polyester Swatch Card.

TN = Textiles Nylon, which shows the color references printed on nylon, as with the FHI Nylon Brights Set.

PANTONE SkinTone Guide

The PANTONE SkinTone Guide has a separate numbering system. Each four-digit number consists of two digits reflecting the hue and undertone of the skin, followed by a second set of digits representing the tone, lightness, and darkness of the skin from light to dark, for example, 1Y09 SP. The guide is primarily used in the fashion and beauty industries, as well as in digital game and video production, to ensure that realistic and diverse skin tones are accurately represented on screen.

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