You sign off a design on screen, and it looks exactly right. Then the print arrives, and your bright blue has gone a little dull, or your purple looks slightly grey. It is natural to assume something went wrong when it was printed.
The truth is, it probably didn't.
Print and screens make colour in completely different ways, and some of the colours you see on screen simply cannot be made with ink. The good news is that once you know why it happens, most of it is easy to prevent.
Your screen makes colour by shining light. It mixes red, green and blue light (RGB) and starts from black, so the more light it adds, the brighter the colour gets. That is why screens can show electric blues, neon greens and glowing purples.
Print has no light of its own. It uses four inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK), laid on white paper. Each layer of ink absorbs some of the light in the room, so the more ink you add, the darker the colour gets.
One adds light. The other takes it away. So the same design will never look identical in both.
Every colour system has a range of colours it can produce, called its gamut. A screen's range is bigger than the range of ink on paper. Most everyday colours sit happily inside both, which is why most print looks as you expected.
The brightest, most saturated screen colours sit outside what ink can reach. When an RGB file is printed, those colours are converted to the closest colour ink can make. That is the moment a brand colour drifts.
The colours most likely to change are:
More and more artwork is now created in tools like Canva, Figma and Adobe Express. They are quick, easy and brilliant for social posts and presentations. But they are built for screens, so they work in RGB, and most do not let you choose CMYK colours or see how a colour will print.
That means the design you approve on screen is often showing you colours the printed piece cannot match. The tool is not doing anything wrong. It just was not made for print.
Even with the right CMYK values, the same file can look different depending on:
Our own brand violet is a good example. On screen it is HEX #7E33FF, bright and punchy. For print, our brand guidelines set it as CMYK 68 / 76 / 0 / 0. Printed, it will always look a little calmer than it does on a monitor.
But because that CMYK value is written down, it prints the same way every time, on every job. A colour that is slightly different from the screen but identical on every printed piece is far better for your brand than one that changes from job to job.
Online tools have made design quicker and easier, but colour for print is one of the areas where experience really counts. A designer who works in print will set up files in CMYK from the start, use your official brand values, know which colours are likely to shift, and adjust the design so it looks right on paper, not just on screen.
If your materials matter, whether that is a campaign, signage or anything printed in volume, involving a proper designer is the most reliable way to protect your brand. If you do not have one, talk to us and we can point you in the right direction.
Speak to our team. We’ll look over your files, flag anything likely to cause problems and help you get the result you expect, first time.