Pantone stands for PMS Pantone Matching System. Used especially in the design and print industry colours are given numbers and these are used by designer and printers to ensure the exact colour is used. Brands use Pantone colours to ensure all material produced has same colour regardless of the the medium being printed. For example, PMS1837 is the Pantone reference for Tiffany & Co’s famous blue colour which can be seen across their packaging, signage and displays. Printer can use Pantone inks meaning they will get the exact colour. If the printing process doesn’t allow the use of Pantone inks then the Pantone guide tells the printer what percentage of CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) to use to achieve the best possible match.

There are various Pantone guides available but the most common are PMS Coated and PMSUncoated. These show swatches of each colour printed on uncoated and coated paper stocks – uncoated papers absorb more ink than coated so the colours can vary considerably between the two.

If you have a Pantone reference, we can tell you which products are the closest match to that colour and use the PMS for print matching.

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