Everything you want to know about RGB, PMS and CMYK colours  

Consumers are bombarded with choices all day long. Do you want your customer to pick out your perfect gem among all those products? Branding is the foundation, the essence of your brand. The quality of your products, the tone of voice you use to address your target audience (at a specific moment), and your brand’s visual identity are all key components of a top-notch brand strategy. Consistent use of colour is a crucial factor within your brand’s visual identity. Major brands like Coca-Cola and Ikea understand this. But a striking corporate colour alone isn’t enough.

How important is colour consistency for branding?

With the various colour systems CMYK, PMS, and RGB, colour deviation is a real possibility. But you want to be sure the final result is as accurate as possible to your or your clients’ expectations. In this blog post, we’ll tell you all about the different colour systems you’ll encounter when ordering printed materials. We’ll also share two case studies on branding and colour deviation. Is minimal colour deviation really such a problem for brand consistency?

What is the difference between RGB, CMYK, and PMS?

As a marketer or designer, you’ll encounter three different colour systems: RGB, CMYK, and PMS. Monitor designs use the RGB system to display colours. Think of computer screens, televisions, cameras, and smartphones. For print work, CMYK and PMS colours are the standard. Which of the two colour systems you use depends on your design and the substrate (paper, plastic, textile), as well as the available printing techniques. Generally, you use CMYK colours for full-colour printing. PMS colours are used for logos and branding.

But colour isn’t always black and white. What you can see isn’t always what you’ll get or be able to reproduce on a screen or a piece of paper. Therefore, the remainder of this article, we’ll delve deeper into how these colour systems work and their specific applications. 

RGB for screens and online

The RGB system is a colour model in which light of the primary colours red, green and blue (hence RGB) is mixed to create a colour spectrum. We start with no light, which is black. The more light of the three colours we add, the further we move along the spectrum toward white. By emitting just two of the three colours of light, thousands of colours and hues can be created.  

The RGB colour system is an additive colour system. Light is added together to create colours. On a screen, each of the three light sources is formed by a single point of light, a pixel. But to the eye, these pixels coincide. We use the RGB colour system for sources that emit light, such as computers, televisions, and smartphones. RGB is not suitable for printing, because paper absorbs light. 

RGB colour coding

Hexadecimal (HEX) is commonly used for encoding RGB colours in web design and HTML. In this system, each colour is represented by a combination of six characters, consisting of numbers and letters. For example, #FF0048 is the hex code for the Print.com colour “passionate pink.” Besides HEX, you can also use LAB and HSB to encode RGB colours.

Good to know

When you want to print a design, the result is never what you see on your RGB monitor. The RGB colour spectrum is larger than that of, for example, CMYK. For print work, we always use CMYK colours and, to a lesser extent, PMS colours. Therefore, as a designer, keep in mind what the actual print colour will be.

Colour systems for printing: CMYK and PMS

For print work, we use two different colour systems: CMYK and PMS. The colour system you choose depends on your design, the type of product (the substrate), and the available printing methods. For example, we often use the full-colour CMYK colour system for photos. For corporate identity printing, such as business cards with logos, we sometimes use CMYK colours and other times the PMS system. What exactly are the differences between CMYK and PMS, and what should you pay attention to?

CMYK for full colour printing  

Do you use photos in your design, or images with many different shades and colours? CMYK is the way to go. With the four basic colours of the CMYK system, Cyan (blue), Magenta (pink/red), Yellow and BlacK, an infinite number of colour combinations can be created. The CMYK colour system is a subtractive model in which colours are subtracted from white light. A certain percentage of white light falls on a surface (such as paper) and is absorbed by various dyes (such as in ink and paint). The subtractive colours in the CMYK model are cyan (blue), magenta (red), and yellow.

If you apply one of the subtractive colours cyan, magenta, or yellow to a surface like paper, the complementary colour (the colour visible to the eye) is absorbed. Cyan absorbs red, magenta absorbs green, and yellow absorbs blue. If you superimpose cyan and yellow, red and blue are absorbed, leaving green as the visible colour. The more colours you add, the closer you move along the colour spectrum toward black. In practice, however, printing often produces a dark brown colour. That’s why K was added: black ink used, for example, for legible body text.

CMYK colour coding

In CMYK, we code different colours using a percentage system. The percentage values ​​indicate the ratio of each CMYK colour used in the printing process. For example, C: 30%, M: 60%, Y: 0%, and K: 0% represent a light shade of blue.

Good to know

The CMYK colour spectrum is somewhat limited. Certain intense colours, such as orange and deep blue hues, are difficult to print using CMYK. Theoretically, orange consists of yellow and magenta, but in practice, the resulting colour is often brownish. Colours can also vary (minimally) between print jobs. The composition of the ink, the type of printing press, the substrate, the temperature, and the humidity all play a role in this.

CMYK in a nutshell

• For photos and designs with many shades and colours – depending on the product
• Four basic colours that allow for endless colour combinations
• Some colours, such as orange and deep blue, are difficult to print with CMYK

Pantone® (PMS) colours

PMS colours, also known as Pantone colours or spot colours, are globally standardised colours where the ink is pre-mixed to the correct shade. A green logo, therefore, doesn’t consist of yellow and blue dots, but of a single layer of green ink. This way, your logo will always be the same colour, no matter which printer you use. And do you want to print material in a special colour, such as fluorescent yellow or metallic purple? PMS is your rock.

Pantone® is the company behind PMS colours. They publish the colour codes. There are now over 1,800 PMS colours, and new ones are constantly being added. Curious about the published PMS colours? You can view the PMS colours online. But beware: the colours may differ from the actual printed colours because your screen displays RGB colours. Want to be sure? Then go for the real deal and order a Pantone colour chart. It’s like the RAL paint chart you get at the DIY store when choosing a paint colour for your wall. But for printing and print work in PMS colours.

PMS colour coding

The Pantone Matching System uses a unique numbering system for colour coding. Each colour is assigned a PMS number: a standardised language for accurate colour reproduction. For example, PMS 185 represents a specific shade of red. This coding ensures consistency across different materials and applications.

Good to know

The ink colour of a PMS colour is always the same, but some paper types and materials absorb colour more strongly. This can cause colour variations. For example, uncoated paper (uncoated, U) absorbs more colour than coated paper (coated, C). Therefore, each PMS colour has three versions: coated (C), uncoated (U), and matte (M) paper.

PMS in a nutshell

• Forever-recognisable logos and corporate identity
• Special colours such as fluorescent and metallic are available
• Separate colour codes for coated, uncoated, and matte paper types

PMS-CMYK conversion using the Pantone Bridge colour wheel 

Have you created a logo or design in CMYK colours, but want to print it in PMS colours? The Pantone Bridge colour chart shows the colour codes for PMS and CMYK colours. The right column of the chart contains the CMYK colour codes, and the left column contains the Pantone colours. In Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, you simply copy the colour values ​​of the PMS colour. It’s a piece of cake!

Can you convert CMYK colours to PMS colours without the Pantone Bridge colour chart? Yes, you can. But you’d rather not. With the Pantone Bridge colour chart, you can be sure. There are websites and tools that promise you don’t need a colour chart. On those websites, for example, you can enter a CMYK colour code, and the Pantone colour code will appear on your screen within two seconds. We thought we’d put it to the test.

Print.com case study: searching for that one PMS colour

For the Print.com logo and other materials, we use the reddish-pink colour “passionate pink.” The CMYK code for our favorite colour, pink, is 0, 95, 60, 0. We want to find the PMS colour closest to the CMYK colour. Therefore, we enter the CMYK colour code into one of the free CMYK-to-PMS tools. The tool gives us three options for Pantone colours that are close to the CMYK colour.

As you can see, the conversion tool gives us several shades of red PMS colours that are quite far apart. Another CMYK-PMS conversion tool provides the following Pantone colour codes when we enter the CMYK colour code.

The Pantone colour for pink that we use at Print.com is 192 (C + U). The second tool indicates this as a PMS colour. But the tool also gives us three other possible Pantone colours. The risk of selecting a PMS colour that differs significantly from the CMYK colour on print is therefore 75%. Furthermore, we view PMS colours on a monitor, which displays RGB colours. The colours will always appear differently on print. These are many factors that increase the risk of colour deviation. If you want to minimise the risk of colour deviation, it’s better to use a Pantone colour chart when switching from CMYK to PMS.

Coca-Cola case study: 50 shades of red

Completely preventing colour deviation in print is a myth. Even major brands like Coca-Cola experience colour deviation. The sweet drink brand is a true branding master. And everyone immediately recognises “Coca-Cola red.”

Coca-Cola certainly always uses the same PMS colour. Right? But appearances can be deceiving. For fear of counterfeiters, Coca-Cola chose not to publish the colour code for the oh-so-recognisable red. The result: 50 shades of red. Without published colour codes, designers and marketers search for the colour in their own way. Not always successfully, which means that marketing materials and even Coca-Cola products don’t always have the same shade of red. Coca-Cola gets away with it, because consumers do not recognise the typical colour red at all. 

Show your true colours: dealing with colour deviations in print and printed matter

In the world of print, colour deviation is a fact of life. Even major brands like Coca-Cola can’t prevent colours from sometimes turning out differently than desired. Brand consistency is a combination of brand proposition, a strong tone of voice, and a recognisable corporate identity. More on this in the article Branding Blog: WOW! It’s actually made of Paper!

By considering the differences between RGB, CMYK, and PMS, you can minimise colour deviation in corporate identity. But eliminating colour deviation completely? No one can. Because of all the steps in the printing process, from file delivery to substrate and even the printing process itself, there are simply too many times when colour deviation can occur.

In the case of Coca-Cola and their 50 shades of red, we see that a little colour difference isn’t so bad after all.

Good to know: Check out the image at the top of the page. A selection of Print.com goodies, you’ll also notice 50 shades of Red, and remember you’re viewing that image in RGB, so they’ll be a different shade of red to the real item!