Understanding Color

With the water-based pigments we use, you can achieve millions of beautiful colors. Because of our digital process, your prints will be consistent from order to order and there are no caps on how many colors you can use. For the best results, please use RGB or LAB color spaces from the beginning of the design process to the end. We can accept CMYK, but your file will be converted to LAB before printing. Colors display differently monitor to monitor and print differently depending on the printer. Ordering a test swatch before yardage will ensure that you receive the colors you want.

You can expect to see slightly different results from the different weights of fabric, for example, Upholstery Weight Twill is the heaviest fabric, so it can hold more pigment, than the Voile which is our lightest. Same for silk, if we were to use the same amount of pigment for the Twill as we do for the Crepe de Chine, all the colors would bleed into each other. We have reduced the amount of pigment that is printed on the Crepe de Chine with out reducing the color vibrancy, but expect to see slightly different colors and some bleed in the darkest colors.

Spoonflower has created tools to help designers manage color:

The Spoonflower Color Guide

Using the Spoonflower Color Changer with the Color Guide

To use the color changer, upload your digital file to Spoonflower and select 'change colors' from either the actions menu under each design in your design library or from the drop down menu when you have your design open in the fabric previewer. Note that whenever you use the Color Changer, a new design is created; your original source design will remain unchanged. You can manage color in three steps:

Simplify your colors: In order to change the colors in a design, the color changer translates the original image into at most 24 different colors. When you first use the color changer, it will automatically simplify your design to a palette of colors based on what it finds in your design, you can fine tune this by clicking 'Advanced Color Options' and resetting the number of colors (options are 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, and 24 colors). A preview of the smaller color version of your design will appear on the right. Please be aware that for large designs or photographs this can take a a minute to load.

Select a new color: Once you've reduced the colors in your design, select the color you want to change. The left side of the Color Changer will turn into a clickable palette that corresponds exactly to the colors on the Color Guide. Referring to the Color Guide, select the new color you want and find that color on the color palette. Note that the color guide has hex codes on it below each color chip. Holding your mouse over each color on the color palette will reveal its hex code. Click on the new color you want.

Apply the color to your design: Once you've selected the new color, press the 'change' button. The Color Changer will replace each pixel containing the old color with a pixel containing the new one. Note that this is also an intensive process and will take longer for larger designs. A preview of the design with the color change will appear on the right. You can change as many colors as you like, repeating the color selection and application process until you are happy with the final result. At any point, you can go back to the starting point and re-work your color changes by selecting 'revert'. After each color change, you can also choose to give your revised design a new name and save it.

We hope you find this useful for tuning colors, and also for creating versions of a design in different colorways. Please remember to always swatch newly colored designs before ordering substantial yardage.

General Tips for Color

Black stripes on a dark-grey background are a bad idea (or forest green stripes on an emerald green background). Dark colors that are similar to each other may blend together without enough contrast. More generally, highly saturated dark colors used in large, solid areas don't have the visual impact they do in the digital version of your design. A picture of a nebula, for example, is not likely to print especially well using our process. We can print black fabric, but keep in mind that to do so our printers have to spray tiny droplets of black ink all over the surface of white fabric to create the black. It's not nearly as effective as dying fabric black. We only print on white fabric (there are no white inks), so there's no way to start with dark fabric and create a lighter colored design on top of it.

Good contrasts on fine details print well. The resolution possible with digital printing on textiles is actually better than screen-printed textiles, so you can do amazing work with details in your designs as long as the contrast is good. Dark colors work well as foreground and detail elements, although they may render somewhat lighter than they do on your monitor.

If you're not sure how something is going to look, it's a good idea to order a swatch or a fat quarter before purchasing yardage. There are lots of fancy tools for managing color, but in the end the only way to judge color on fabric is by holding a physical sample in your hands. Most people are happy with how their designs turn out, but testing first is a really good idea, and essential if getting the colors just so is intrinsic to your goal.

Spoonflower delivers a fabric printing service that is automated from start to finish. That means that we print whatever you upload without changing your file in any way or trying to guess what you might have wanted. We don't tweak files or try to match specific colors you specify. Color matching and every other part of printing is handled by our software. This makes Spoonflower really useful for a couple of reasons: 1) It makes custom fabric fast and affordable (when it used to be rare and expensive), and 2) It puts full control of the process of creating custom printed textiles in your hands. But... it also means that we're not looking at every file and trying to prevent mistakes from happening. If there's an accidental line of blank pixels in your file and you order the design without noticing the line, that's the way it's going to print. If the colors from your monitor don't translate to the fabric the way you expect, there's no way for us to let you know beforehand. We always do our best to make sure our customers are happy, but we also do our best to be as transparent as possible about the limitations, as well as the advantages, of using our process. We are glad you are here and we want to make everything about our community and our product fun and satisfying. If you ever have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to email help@spoonflower.com to ask.