Frequently Asked Questions from Clients: #1

Over the years we’ve noticed that there are common questions clients repeatedly ask us. And you know what? They should. These are questions that are not in the world of everyday knowledge. They are things that, as experts, we’ve learned because we had to. Often they are things that are annoying or frustrating (to us and our clients) but they are things we have to live with. As such, we often find ourselves in the situation of trying to explain some technical nuance while our clients stare at us, bewildered, with an expression like “what the heck are they talking about and how did they get to be such nerds?” So rather than continuing to keep these things in our heads, we thought they might make for a good ongoing series of articles in our blog.

Client FAQ #1:
Why do colors look different on different monitors?

Ah, the classic web design question. Most clients are used to the world of print design and things like Pantone chips. You choose a Pantone color, and that’s the color. The people at Pantone spent a lot of time figuring this out.

Unfortunately things are not so easy in the world of the web. This is because the majority of computer and tv monitors are not color calibrated (calibration are methods to make colors consistent). Just think how easy it is to change the brightness or contrast on your monitor. When you do this, you are also changing the color. Ever notice how, when you look at someone else’s computer monitor, you sometimes think “wow her monitor is so dark” (or bright), or the colors just look weird. No calibration. Or, have you ever walked into an electronics store and seen all the TV’s for sale, and noticed how the colors looked a bit different on each one? Same issue. Almost all computer monitors are like this, and there is just no way to get accurate color rendering.

That’s not to say though that we can’t at least try. There is no reason not to use a Pantone chip (or any color swatch) as a starting point for agreement. Pantone does make Pantone Matching Guides with RGB equivalents, so at least that way there is agreement on what the color should look like in an optimal, color calibrated setting.

OK, so that’s the short answer, and if you are in a hurry, you can stop here. But really, color is way more complicated than most people realize, and it helps to be aware of this. Our tendency is to think of color as its own thing rather than as a property of light, which is what it really is. Here’s an example: take a red ball into a room with the lights turned off. Is the ball still there? Yes, of course. You can feel it in your hands. And is it still red? Actually no, it’s not. When you turned out the lights, you turned off the colors–literally. The ball is not “red but I just can’t see it”. We only think this way because we know that if we turn the light on, the ball will return to its red state.

So hopefully that sheds some light (terrible pun intended) on why color accuracy is such a tricky thing in web design when it is so straightforward with print. For a more complete explanation on how color works, you should read the additive color and subtractive color articles on Wikipedia, because “direct” color that comes from a monitor is completely different than “reflected” color that you see on paper. And then when just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, you can read about color theory. Because guess what? Our percpetion of colors changes depending on what other colors are nearby!