Pantone Color Comparison Tool

How to compare two Pantone colors

The comparison runs entirely in your browser and updates as you type — there is no convert button, no signup and nothing is uploaded. Five steps take you from two PMS codes to a decision you can defend on a press check rather than a hunch about what looks close enough. If you do not have two codes yet — say both came off the same logo — our guide to finding the Pantone color from an image covers how to extract them first.

1. Enter the first PMS code in Color A. Type the first Pantone code into the Color A box. The search takes the shorthand people actually use — “186 C”, “Cool Gray 9”, “Reflex Blue”, “Black 6 C” — with or without the hyphen, and matches it against all 3,679 colours in the library. Pick an entry from the suggestion list to lock it in.
2. Enter the second PMS code in Color B. Do the same in the Color B box. The swap button between the two fields flips A and B if you entered them the wrong way round, and the share button copies a link that reopens the page with both colours already selected, which is worth doing before you send a comparison to a printer.
3. Read the side-by-side swatch before the numbers. Judge hue first. Step back from the screen and look at the two panels together: if one reads warmer, greener or more violet than the other at arm's length, the numbers below will only confirm what you have already seen. If you cannot separate them by eye, the ΔE*00 figure tells you how much margin you actually have.
4. Read the ΔE*00 score against the tolerance ladder. The ΔE*00 (CIEDE2000) score is the perceptual distance between the two colours. Under 1 is imperceptible, 1–2 is a commercial match, 2–3.5 is the usual press tolerance for spot colours, and anything above 5 will read as a different colour to anyone looking.
5. Cross-check the values for your actual medium. Finally read the HEX, RGB and CMYK breakdown for the medium you are producing in. HEX and RGB matter for screen work, CMYK for process printing where the spot ink is being simulated, and neither replaces a physical guide if the job is going on press.

Understanding ΔE*00: how different are two colours, really?

ΔE is a measure of Pantone colour difference: one number for how far apart two colours sit in a space built to model human vision. It is not a difference in ink formula or in HEX digits — it is a difference in appearance. That distinction is the whole point. Two colours whose HEX values differ by a lot can look nearly identical, and two whose HEX values differ by a little can look obviously unlike each other, because sRGB digits are display instructions rather than a description of what an eye does with the result.

The original 1976 formula, ΔE76, was simply the straight-line distance between two colours in CIELAB. It was easy to compute and perceptually uneven: it over-penalised differences in some hue regions and badly under-reported them in others, most notoriously in saturated blues, where two colours could measure a comfortable ΔE76 and still look like a mistake on press. CIEDE2000 — ΔE*00 — was published to fix exactly that. It adds weighting functions for lightness, chroma and hue, plus a rotation term that corrects the blue region specifically, so its numbers track what people actually see.

This is why a ΔE of 2 in a blue does not look like a ΔE of 2 in a grey. Human vision is far more sensitive to small shifts in low-chroma neutrals than to the same measured shift in a saturated colour, so ΔE*00 compresses the saturated end and expands the neutral end to compensate. A pair of greys at ΔE*00 2 and a pair of blues at ΔE*00 2 should therefore look about equally different — which is the property ΔE76 never had.

The other reason to trust ΔE*00 over an eyeballed HEX comparison is that it is device- and observer-independent. It is computed in CIELAB from a defined illuminant and standard observer, so it means the same thing on your laptop, on a printer’s calibrated proofer and in a spectrophotometer report. Two HEX values compared by eye mean whatever your particular monitor, its profile and the light in your room make them mean. The ladder below is how the printing industry reads the resulting number.

Coated vs uncoated: why the same PMS number compares differently

186 C and 186 U are the same ink. The only thing that changes is the paper underneath it, and that alone puts them 11.74 ΔE*00 apart — several times the tolerance most brand owners would accept anywhere else. The Pantone coated vs uncoated difference is not a colour decision that somebody got wrong; it is what the substrate does to a fixed quantity of ink.

Coated stock carries a mineral or polymer layer that keeps ink sitting on the surface, where it stays dense and saturated and reflects light cleanly. Uncoated stock is absorbent: the vehicle wicks into the fibre, the pigment settles into a rougher surface, and the paper scatters light back through the ink film. The result is lighter, duller and lower in contrast. Dot gain compounds it — halftone dots spread as the ink is absorbed, so tints print heavier on uncoated even as solids print weaker.

So when you compare a C code against a U code here, read the number as a substrate question rather than a colour question. It is telling you how much this particular ink will shift if the job moves from a coated sheet to a kraft box, which is genuinely useful — but it is not telling you that anyone chose the wrong colour. Specify the code that matches the stock you are actually printing on, and expect the two to look different side by side. Our coated vs uncoated guide covers how to brief a printer when a brand has to live on both.

Pantone comparisons designers look up most

A handful of Pantone vs Pantone questions come up far more often than the rest, usually because two codes share a word, a number or a reputation. Here is what each pair actually is, with the ΔE*00 figure computed from the same library the tool above searches. Every row in the table opens the comparison pre-loaded, so you can check it against your own screen.

When two Pantone colours are close enough to substitute

There is no single ΔE*00 number that means “safe to swap”. The threshold moves with what the colour is doing, how it will be produced and how it will be looked at, and getting that context right matters more than shaving a decimal place off the score.

Brand identity work has near-zero tolerance regardless of ΔE. A logo colour is a recognition asset and often a registered one, so the answer to “can we use the other red?” is no, even at ΔE*00 1.5 — not because anyone would see it in isolation, but because the whole value of the colour is that it is the same everywhere. Packaging is a substrate question first: on coated board a two-point difference sits next to twenty identical packs on a shelf and becomes visible, while on kraft the paper moves the colour further than the substitution would.

Signage and architectural work is judged at viewing distance under uncontrolled light, so tolerances widen considerably — a difference that is obvious on a desk is invisible on a fascia six metres up, and gloss level will shift the appearance more than the colour choice did. Textile is a different question entirely: it has its own deck, and a coated PMS number is a starting point for a dye lab rather than an answer. Ask for the TCX or TPG code and a lab dip on the actual fabric.

Comparing colours across different systems

The tool above compares two colours inside the Pantone library. Comparing a Pantone colour against a different standard — RAL against NCS, a lab measurement against a PMS number, a screen colour against a textile code — is a cross-system question, and each of these converters answers it with a ΔE*00 figure rather than a yes or no.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. An in-library comparison asks whether two colours from the same deck, made from the same ink base and printed on the same paper, are close enough to swap — a question with a real answer, because both sides of it are defined in the same terms. A cross-standard conversion asks something weaker: which colour in this other system, made from different colourants on a different substrate, comes nearest? There is no exact answer to that, only a nearest neighbour and a ΔE*00 figure telling you how good the nearest neighbour is.

So read the two kinds of result differently. A ΔE*00 of 3 between two PMS codes means you are choosing between two colours you could genuinely specify either of. A ΔE*00 of 3 between a Pantone colour and a RAL code means the closest available coating is a fair approximation of the ink — which is usually as good as it gets, and still needs checking against a physical chip.

Accuracy — read before you specify a colour

Everything on this page is computed from sRGB approximations of physical spot inks. A Pantone colour is a mixed ink laid on a specific paper; the HEX and RGB values here are the closest a standard display can come to that, and sRGB simply cannot reach parts of the Pantone gamut — a number of saturated oranges, greens and blues are clipped to the nearest displayable colour before you ever see them. Two inks that differ visibly on paper can therefore render closer here than they really are.

Your screen is the other variable. An uncalibrated monitor, a colour profile you have never checked and the light in the room all move what you are looking at, and none of that is captured in the ΔE*00 figure. Judge hue relationships on screen if you like, but do not sign off a colour on one. No digital comparison replaces a physical Pantone guide viewed under a D50 light booth, or a spectrophotometer reading if the tolerance actually matters.

Physical guides are consumable. Ink fades, paper yellows and a fan deck that has lived on a sunny desk for five years is no longer the standard it was printed as. Pantone recommends replacing guides roughly every year or two under normal use — if a comparison is going into a contract or a brand manual, make sure the book you are checking against is current.

Related colour tools & guides

Comparing two Pantone colours is usually one step in a longer job. If you arrived with a HEX or CMYK value rather than a PMS code, start with one of the converters below and bring the result back here. If the comparison has to cross into paint, coatings or textile, the cross-standard tools will give you a ΔE*00-ranked shortlist instead of a single answer. And if the two codes you are weighing differ only by their C or U suffix, the coated versus uncoated guide explains what you are actually looking at before you change anything in the artwork.