It can be surprisingly hard to communicate exact colors.  How close is your ‘peach’ to mine? What about your ‘lavender blue’? They’re almost certainly not the same! Not because one of us is wrong, but because words are an inaccurate way to communicate colors.

You’ve probably been in situations where you needed to communicate something more precise than ‘pink’ or ‘red’.  Fortunately, there are several pre-made methods for this, so we don’t have to invent our own system.

Systems for Color Communication

The three main color systems in use today in North America are the Pantone system, RGB and hex codes.  Others less frequently used include CMYK (used primarily in printing), HSL (hue, saturation and lightness), LAB, XYZ, LUV and HWB.  

Pantone

Let’s take a look at the three big systems used in North America.  Pantone ( Pan = all, tone =  color) originated in the 1950’s as a way to match colors for printing. Pantone is a privately held for-profit company whose color system is widely used in the design and fashion industries.  Subscribers receive printed cards with the precisely printed colors to use for reference.  Each year, Pantone’s Color of the Year is eagerly awaited by clothing designers, houseware designers and consumer package goods manufacturers.  The cost of the Pantone information and system, however, is more suited to larger corporations than to artists and small craft businesses.  

Z

RGB and Hex code are similar and often used for computer screens.  These colors made with light use a mix of red, blue and green to make all colors.  RGB uses a number from 0 (white) to 255 (near black) for each color. Hex code also uses numbers and carries similar information but is coded in hexadecimal (base 16) .  Both RGB and Hex code can encode 16,777,216 different possible color codes.   Since human eyes usually see only about one million different colors, it’s easy to see that these color systems have all of our possibilities covered.  Though the colors expressed by the two systems are identical.  RGB tends to be used more by designers, whereas Hex code, which is used in HTML, is preferred by those with a more technical background.  

Since the Hex code is what I use in my Clay Color Recipe business, let me tell you a bit more about this interesting system!

What is Base 16 and How Does it Work?

Our everyday numerical references use a base 10 or decimal system. Computers often use a base 10 or binary system.  Hex color code uses a hexadecimal or base 16 code. Binary uses only 2 symbols, 0’s and 1’s.  Our usual base 10 uses 10 different symbols, 0 – 9.  Each position can be any one of these 10 symbols.  In hexadecimal, each position can be one of 16 different values.  But wait!  We only have 10 number symbols!  What do we use for the other 6 characters that we need?  Hexadecimal uses 0 – 9 plus the first 6 letters of our alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f.  Each color of the hexcode has six symbols:  the first two symbols code for red, the second two for green and the last two for blue.  

Here’s an interesting comparison of the result in decimal of the number 1011 interpreted as binary, decimal or hexadecimal.

How did the use of hexadecimal base originate?

“Hex, short for “hexadecimal base counting”, was invented in France in the year 770 AD. In that time Mervin, a famous wizard, became a counselor to King Charlemagne because he had 8 fingers on each hand.”

This meant Mervin had 16 fingers altogether, so he invented a hexadecimal (base 16) code.  This let him count faster than the other counselors, so he was very important to Charlemagne.

What?!  Somebody had fun inventing this story!  Even funnier, I’ve seen versions of this online presented as fact!!

How did hexcode really originate?

It was actually a Swedish-American engineer, John Nystrom, who proposed using a base 16 (hexadecimal) code in 1859.  He wanted everyone to switch to a calendar with 16 months in the year, a sixteen hour day, and money denominations based on 16. Since we’re not paying for things with 16 dollar bills and we still live in a 12 month calendar with 24 hour days, you can see this didn’t go too far!

By the mid-twentieth century, hexadecimal code proved a good match for computer work:  working in binary (base 2) as computers do, data was divided into zeros and ones.  Each zero or one was a bit, and chunks of 8 bits are called bytes. Since 16 is two times eight, hexadecimal (base 16) was a good fit. 

How does hexadecimal color coding work?

Hexadecimal color codes use the series of 6 numbers or letters to precisely identify more than 16 million colors.  By tradition, a hexadecimal color code uses a series of 6 symbols to identify a color.  Each of these 6 positions can be one of 16 possibilities:  0-9 = 10, a-f = 6, 10 + 6 = 16!  Since the human eye can only distinguish about a million colors, hexadecimal code has definitely got all of our colors covered!

In hexadecimal color code, #000000 designates black and #ffffff means white. It is customary to use a hashtag symbol in front of the 6 positions.

Here is what the hex code primary colors look like: Red, Green and Blue (note: the letters can be upper or lower case, this doesn’t affect the color).

How to find the Hexadecimal code for a particular color?

If you have a photo that contains a color you want the hexadecimal code of, you can use a free online service like: https://imagecolorpicker.com/  If you’ve encountered the color you want on another website, you can do a screenshot and use this in a color picker website.  

Having fun with hexadecimal colors

It always astonishes me to watch the colors change as I add the six symbols to the hex code, one at a time.  In this progression, the final destination is FAE3C2, an ivory buff.  Along the way, we get bright red, orange, pink and citron.  There is not much change between the 5th and the 6th color.

Takeaway

The next time you want to tell someone not physically present about a specific color, consider using a specific color code.  It’ll feel great knowing you are both talking about exactly the same color!!

Color Recipes

Each color recipe you buy from Clay Color Recipes includes the hex color code.  All you have to do is google that color code, and, BINGO!, you have an independent reference for what the color looks like!! 

As a Special Welcome to Clay Color Recipes we are offering you FREE the recipe for mixing a special shade of Summer Sun, using just three base colors of Sculpey Souffle!  Enter your email and we’ll get the FREE Summer Sun color recipe straight to your inbox- and we’ll also get you signed up to receive fresh posts from this color blog!

This sample color recipe contains just basic mixing information.  The colors and palettes you buy on Etsy are loaded with more hints and tips about mixing your perfect colors!