When you’re a business, it’s important to minimize errors as much as possible. The competition is already knocking at your door trying to take business away, meaning you really can’t afford to make too many mistakes internally. Some of the most frustrating yet common types of errors in business are those made when printing. Certain colors can be incredibly difficult to reproduce accurately. Here’s what you should know about troublesome colors that are hard to get right when printing.
1. They Don’t Call It Mellow Yellow for Nothing
Yellow is one of the most troublesome colors to work with in terms of getting the exact shade that you desire when printing. Often yellow will appear lighter than desired on the printed page or other material.
For some businesses, depending on their brand colors, a lighter shade of yellow can be particularly upsetting. For example, if a brand’s colors consist of yellow and blue, if the yellow that’s printed is excessively light, it will show poorly with the blue, which can make it appear even lighter.
If your yellow is too mellow, consider speaking with some experienced print experts. They can point you in the right direction and help you optimize your print environment so that you get the colors you want.
2. White Will Keep You up at Night
Perhaps one of the most frustrating troublesome colors of all in printing is white. Depending on the shade, the color’s natural purity makes it a troublesome color to replicate. If you’re looking for more of a cream or an eggshell white, you might be in luck, but pure white can be hard to print.
3. Purple Can Be a Royal Pain
While purple isn’t one of the most commonly used colors in marketing and promotional material, it’s undoubtedly one of the most challenging colors to print accurately. Whether there is a correlation here or if it’s merely a funny coincidence is debatable.
The color purple has long been associated with royalty, which is quite fitting in this case as it can be a royal pain when printing it out—one of the most troublesome colors.
While purple is difficult to print accurately, the reasons behind this difficulty are rather compelling. The color purple has elements in it that fall outside of the printable gamut. Purple is among the deepest and strongest of colors, which makes it hard to capture. Its distinctive hue, saturation, and chromaticity all serve to make it more difficult to print,
4. Black and Brown
This example is specific to barcode printing. It’s often best to avoid using certain pairs of colors together, namely black and brown. While they may be printed correctly, the combination will be hard to scan, resulting in poor performance.
5. Light Blue, a Troubling Color
Light blue is another one of these troublesome colors that can be hard to get right. That’s because most colors will appear lighter on the screen than after they’re printed. Most colors turn out slightly darker when they’re printed. That’s because you can’t print light, which is why colors appear darker after they’re printed.
Mastering the Art of Troublesome Colors
If you’re serious about color quality and you’ve been struggling to print colors in the shades you want, it pays to seek out some expertise.
One thing that you should keep in mind is that printed colors will never be 100% perfect. You should also know that many struggle to print colors with even 70% accuracy. When you work with color management experts, they can help you print colors with much higher accuracy. Always remember, effective use of color is integral to your brand. Your brand colors are powerful assets that are worth investing in.