The Pantone colour scale is an industry standard series of reference colours for use in the printing industry.

Pantone or spot colours are normally used by lithographic or screen printers when printing items with a limited number of colours (for example a letterhead, or stationary). Pantone ink is purchased by the printer who then creates a screen or plate specifically for that colour ink.

We use a CMYK (full colour) process of printing rather than a spot colour method. With a CMYK print process, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are mixed by layering ink on top of each other to create a full-colour image. Sometimes other colours like light cyan and light magenta are also used to improve print quality.

We cannot guarantee to match all Pantone colours because some Pantone’s contain pigments that push the colour outside of the spectrum of colours available with CMYK inks.

An example would be Pantone 021 orange which is a very bright, almost neon colour. It is impossible to get a close match to this colour with CMYK printing because the colour is too bright.

There are many other colours in the Pantone spectrum that are relatively easy to match but also some that are impossible to closely match. Pantone sell a solid to process guide book which is useful because the Pantone colour is shows next to the nearest CMYK colour as two separate colour chips. If you can access a Pantone solid to process guide book then you can see at a glance how closely your pantone colour can be matched with a CMYK printing process.

All artwork supplied should be set as CMYK colour mode, not Pantone spot colour. If you do not have a Pantone solid to process guide book and need some advice as to the best CMYK colour value to use in the artwork, please call and we can help.

If you have very precise colour matching requirements for your artwork then we recommend purchasing a reduced-scale hard copy proof prior to printing the finished article. The cost is £20 and includes delivery of the proof to a mainland UK address.