Colour plays a crucial role in brand recognition and consumer perception.

For label manufacturers and their output, accurate and consistent colour reproduction is not simply a matter of aesthetic preference but a cornerstone of brand integrity and customer trust.

Given this importance, how much do you know about the way colour works? And what do you understand about the Pantone® Reference Library?

Pantone’s colourful past

Pantone® has become an indispensable tool for label and packaging printers over the last six decades.

In the mid-1960s, a small printing company in New Jersey, USA revolutionised colour communication by introducing the Pantone® Matching System (PMS). This was the first standardised colour reproduction system and enabled designers, manufacturers, and printers to communicate exact colour specifications with clarity and precision.

It’s fair to say that this system transformed the printing industry by eliminating guesswork and ensuring consistency across different production environments.

PMS works by assigning a unique code to each colour, enabling users around the world to reproduce exact shades regardless of the medium. Over the decades, the Pantone® library has grown to include over 2000 colours and continues to evolve with innovations in pigment formulation, sustainability, and digital applications.

The slightest deviation in colour can dilute impact of a brand or, worse, create confusion and mistrust among consumers. For label printers, understanding and effectively utilising the Pantone® reference Library is crucial to maintaining consistency across multiple print runs, substrates, and production methods.

On a more practical level, Pantone® ensures that the colour envisioned by the designer is the colour that ends up on the shelf, bridging the gap between digital proof and physical product. This is particularly critical for multinational brands that require uniformity in their packaging, whether printed in the UK, the USA, or Asia.

ECG and Pantone

Traditionally, full-colour printing relies on the CMYK process to create a wide range of hues. However, CMYK alone is limited in its ability to reproduce many of the vibrant and saturated colours found in the Pantone® Reference Library. The placement of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow on the colour wheel more frequently requires ink formulations to move close to the centre and cross the middle of wheel, where black (Key) resides. The result is dull, muddied colours that do not have the strength and vibrancy expected by today’s brands and consumers.

A ready-made solution has been to use spot colours (pre-mixed Pantone® inks) to match specific brand colours. While effective, this method can be costly and time-consuming, especially for short runs or multiple SKUs.

Enter Extended Colour Gamut (ECG) printing. This expands the CMYK model by adding Orange, Green, and Violet to the mix. The use of even colours significantly broadens the achievable colour spectrum, allowing printers to reproduce up to 90% of the Pantone® library without the need for custom-mixed spot colours.

By leveraging ECG, printers can achieve more vibrant, cleaner, and more consistent colour matches directly on press. For example. the addition of OGV inks allows for purer secondary colours and more accurate rendering of bright Pantone® tones than CMYK alone struggles to replicate.

ECG also helps eliminate variability associated with mixing and applying spot inks, reducing human error and improving repeatability. Eliminating the need for multiple spot colours further streamlines the print process, reduces ink inventory, and shortens set-up times.

For label printers, ECG has become a strategic move that aligns with the demands of modern brand owners and designers seeking flexibility, quality, and environmental responsibility.

If we consider Pantone®’s annual Colour of the Year winners from the last decade, it’s easy to see why ECG helps printers to deliver colours and prints that tap into the cultural zeitgeist and supports design trends of the day:

2015 – Marsala

2016 – Rose Quartz and Serenity

2017 – Greenery

2018 – Ultra Violet

2019 – Living Coral

2020 – Classic Blue

2021 – Ultimate Gray and Illuminating

2022 – Very Peri

2023 – Viva Magenta

2024 – Peach Fuzz

2025 – Mocha Mousse

Many of these lie outside the traditional CMYK gamut. For example, Living Coral and Ultra Violet are difficult to reproduce accurately using just CMYK, often appearing dull or muted in print. However, with ECG, these shades can be rendered with striking clarity and vibrancy, capturing the emotional resonance intended by the original design.

As consumer expectations continue to rise and brand owners demand faster turnaround times without sacrificing quality, label printers must embrace tools that enhance accuracy, consistency, and efficiency. The Pantone® Reference Library provides the foundation for colour communication, while ECG technology enables printers to deliver on that promise at scale.

Using CMYK alone, designers, printers, and brands might have had to compromise, settling for “close enough” colours. ECG removes this compromise, reducing the Delta E variance, and offering near-spot colour quality.

Our PureTone® UV flexo ink system is suitable for both process and ECG printing. As high-strength, single-pigment formulations, PureTone® inks push the boundaries of traditional ink mixing systems, giving narrow web printers a simple, innovative solution, whichever way they choose to print. They deliver the highest strengths, provide maximum saturation with a low film weight, and achieve bright colours straight from the ink pot to a printed label.

By understanding the science behind colour and adopting the latest innovations in print technology, printers can not only meet but exceed client expectations, so ensuring that every label tells the right story, in the right colour, every time.

That makes it all the more important to partner with an ink specialist that knows your needs, supports your work, and provides solutions designed for production excellence and optimised press performance.

Find out more about our high-strength, single-pigment PureTone® inks and contact us today to discover how they can help you deliver the bright and vibrant colours your customers and consumer demand

Pantone® is a registered trademark and a Veralto Product Quality and Innovation company