What is a colorway? Meaning in fashion and textiles

A colorway is one version of a design printed in a particular set of colours. The drawing, the layout and the repeat stay exactly the same. Only the colours change.

A floral print on a cream ground with maroon flowers is one colorway. The same flowers in gold on a bottle-green ground is another.

Fashion brands use the word for garments too: the same kurta in black, olive and navy is three colorways of one style. For print designers the word has a more precise job, because a print has several colours that have to work together.

Parts of a colorway

Most printed designs have three kinds of colour. When you build a colorway, you decide each one.

Part	What it is	Saree example
Ground	The background colour that covers most of the fabric	Off-white body of a cotton saree
Motif colours	The main shapes: flowers, paisleys, butta, geometric figures	Mango-yellow paisleys with a rust outline
Accent colours	Small touches that lift the design: dots, fine lines, highlights	Tiny teal dots inside each paisley

Take one design and change the colours in each part:

Colorway	Ground	Motif	Accent
A (original)	Off-white	Mango yellow, rust	Teal
B	Navy	Mango yellow, rust	Teal
C	Blush pink	Dusty rose, plum	Sage
D	Black	Gold, deep red	Emerald

Example: B changes only the ground. C changes everything to a soft palette. D is a full festive version. A buyer would see all four as one print offered in 4 colorways.

The word itself has two spellings. "Colourway" is British and Indian English, "colorway" is American. Both mean the same thing.

How many to make

There is no standard number. One fashion software company that writes about product development says most apparel brands offer two to six colorways per style per season (WavePLM).

That is a count of what reaches the shop, after the brand has rejected others. For a print designer the reasoning matters more than the number:

• Each colorway costs the buyer money in production. The same source notes that every colorway can need its own minimum order with the mill. A buyer who likes eight colorways may still produce only two.
• Buyers want a choice of grounds. Showing at least one light, one mid and one dark ground lets a buyer picture the print for different seasons and customers.
• Too many colorways look unedited. Twenty colorways that differ only slightly make it harder for a buyer to decide. Fewer, clearly different ones are easier to pick from.

Tip: Make many options for yourself, then send the buyer the best few that are clearly different from each other.

How mills use colorways

Sampling and strike-offs

Before bulk printing, the mill prints a short sample called a strike-off so the buyer can check colour, scale and print quality on the real fabric.

Each colorway that goes into production normally gets its own strike-off, because a colour that looks right on screen can print differently on georgette, crepe or cotton.

One designer's guide recommends comparing strike-offs against dyed solid swatches (lab dips) and keeping corrections to about three rounds (Inside Fashion Design).

Screens and minimum orders

In rotary screen or flatbed printing, each colour in the design needs its own screen. A new colorway usually keeps the same separation, so the mill can print it with the same engraved screens and different colour pastes.

One example from fabric printing history shows the same design printed from the same eight screens in several colorways (Color on Cloth). Shared screens are one reason screen-printed designs are so often offered in colorways.

The V&A museum in London, for example, keeps a 1970 screen-printed furnishing fabric by Shirley Craven together with samples of three other colorways of the same design (V&A).

Warning: Most mills still set a minimum order for each colorway, and minimums vary widely. One UK rotary printer, for example, states a minimum of 250 metres (Magic Textiles). Ask your mill or print house for their figure before promising a buyer a colorway.

Digital (inkjet) printing has no screens, so an extra colorway costs nothing to set up. It still needs a strike-off on the real fabric.

Catalogues and range planning

In Surat and Ahmedabad, sarees, dress material and kurti fabric are often sold in sets of designs and colours. A colorway set lets a trader offer one design to shops with different customers: brighter colours for one market, softer ones for another.

Building a good set

Keep the value contrast

Value means how light or dark a colour is, ignoring its hue. If the original design has dark motifs on a light ground, a colorway with mid-tone motifs on a mid-tone ground will look flat. From a distance the motif will disappear.

Tip: Convert each colorway to greyscale. In Photoshop, add a Black & White adjustment layer and turn it on and off. If the motif is still clear in grey, the colorway will read well on fabric.

Change the ground first, then the motif

The ground covers the most fabric, so it changes the look the most. A good set often starts with ground changes only (as in colorway B above), then adds one or two versions where the motif colours change too.

Keep accent colours small. When an accent grows, it starts competing with the motif.

Use palettes your market buys

For Indian buyers, think in seasons and occasions:

Season or market	Ground ideas	Motif and accent ideas
Festive (Navratri, Diwali)	Red, maroon, mustard, bottle green, royal blue	Gold, orange, rani pink, small white or silver-grey highlights
Wedding pastels	Blush, mint, powder blue, peach, pistachio	Dusty rose, sage, soft gold, ivory
Summer	White, off-white, light grey, pale lemon	Indigo, teal, coral, leaf green
Daily wear and office	Navy, charcoal, beige, olive	Rust, mustard, muted teal

Navratri has its own custom of a different colour for each of the nine days. The list for each year is shared widely before the festival, so check the current list when you plan garba prints.

Pastels are now a common bridal choice as well as red. Elle India reports brides choosing mint, rose quartz, dusty peach, powder blue and pistachio (Elle India).

Keep the colour count the same

If the design will be screen printed, each colorway should use the same number of colours as the original. Adding a colour to one colorway means adding a screen.

For digital printing this matters less, but keeping the count the same keeps the set looking like one family.

Presenting to a buyer

Sheet layout

A clean colorway sheet helps a buyer decide quickly, even when it arrives on WhatsApp:

1. Put the original design large at the top or on the left.
2. Show each colorway as a same-size swatch of the repeat, in a grid. Use the same crop for every swatch so the buyer compares colour only.
3. Under each swatch, print the colorway name and the colour chips with codes for the ground, motif and accents.
4. Add the design number, fabric and print method in one line at the bottom.
5. Save one PDF or one JPG for WhatsApp, and keep the full-size files ready for the mill.

Naming

Use a name that survives a phone call: design number plus a letter or short colour word, such as "D-2417 A", "D-2417 Navy" or "D-2417 Blush".

Avoid names like "Final 2 new", which cause wrong files to reach the printer. Use the same name in the file name, the sheet and the order.

Pantone TCX references and their caveats

Many buyers ask for Pantone TCX codes. TCX colours are dyed on 100% cotton poplin. Pantone sells them as 4 x 4 inch cotton swatch cards in all 2,801 Fashion, Home + Interiors colours (Pantone).

Keep these limits in mind:

• A TCX code shown on a monitor is only an approximation. Approve colours against a physical swatch.
• A TCX shade is dyed on cotton. The same shade printed on polyester georgette or silk crepe will look different, so the strike-off on the real fabric is what you approve.
• Two colours can match in daylight and differ under shop lighting. Textile colour checks use standard daylight (D65) as the main light and a store light such as TL84 to catch these mismatches (3NH).
• Swatches fade. Pantone advises replacing its Graphics guides every 12 to 18 months because colours fade with light and handling (Pantone support). Cotton swatches also fade, so keep yours out of sunlight.

Note: Give the nearest TCX code as a reference and say on the sheet that the strike-off is the final colour standard.

Colorways in Photoshop

Photoshop can make good colorways if the file is set up for it. These are the methods designers use most.

Adjustment layers

Hue/Saturation, Color Balance and Selective Color layers sit above the design and change colours without touching the pixels. With "Colorize" or a single colour range picked in Hue/Saturation, you can shift one family of colours.

Save one adjustment group per colorway and switch them on and off. This works well when colours are clearly separate. It struggles when the ground and motif share similar shades.

Replace Color and Color Range

Pick a colour with the eyedropper, set the fuzziness, then fill or adjust the selection. This suits flat designs with a few clean colours. On scanned or textured designs, edges can turn patchy.

Indexed colour

Image > Mode > Indexed Color reduces the design to a colour table of up to 256 colours. You then edit the table (Image > Mode > Color Table) and every pixel of that colour changes at once. This is fast for flat screen-print artwork.

Warning: Indexed mode flattens the file and limits editing. Adobe notes that layers are not supported in this mode, so work on a copy (Adobe Help).

Spot channels

If the design is already separated into spot channels, you can double-click each channel and pick a new colour. This changes the preview colour of each screen and is the cleanest way to make colorways of a separated design.

Illustrator's Recolor Artwork

Designers who draw in vector often use Illustrator's Recolor Artwork, which swaps colours across a whole design from one panel. It works on vector shapes only.

A placed raster image (a JPG or TIFF) is not recoloured. You would need to trace it into vectors first (Adobe Community).

Each of these takes time per colorway, and the time grows when the design has textures, shading or many close colours.

The one-click way

If you want to see many options quickly, upload the design to Color Variation. It makes many colorways of the design in one click.

Your motif stays as drawn while the ground takes new colours, so you can see light, dusty and dark versions side by side. Download the ones you like at full size, then send the best few to the buyer or refine them in Photoshop. It is free with an account.

Common mistakes

• Changing only the hue. Navy to bottle green keeps the same value and often looks like the same colorway to a buyer. Change lightness too.
• Losing the motif. A mid-tone motif on a mid-tone ground disappears on fabric. Check every colorway in greyscale.
• Adding colours. A colorway with more colours than the original needs extra screens in screen printing.
• Using different crops on the sheet. If swatches show different parts of the design, the buyer ends up comparing the crops instead of the colours.
• Trusting the monitor. Monitor colours and fabric colours differ. Approve on a strike-off.
• Unclear names. "New final" files lead to wrong prints. Name every colorway with the design number.

Next step

Pick one design you already sell and make a set of colorways with at least one light, one mid and one dark ground. Upload it to Color Variation, download the strongest options at full size and put them on one sheet for your buyer.