SOUTHEAST

UNIVERSITY
Department of Textile Engineering
“Lab Report”
Course Code : TCS - 412.2
Course Title : Application of Computer in Textile – Lab.

Report No : 02
Report Name : Study on Pantone book.

Submitted To -

Md. Shamim Alam

Assistant Professor,
Department of Textile Engineering,
Southeast University.
Submitted By -
Name : Zobair Hasan Moon
ID : 2019000400045
Batch : 40th
Section : WPT

Submission Date :
Exp no : 02
Exp Name : Study on Pantone book

Introduction : Pantone is a standard ‘Color Matching System’ where a code

number is used to identify each color. Whatever the color, it is easy to identify any
color with the help of Pantone Color Guide, because each color has a different or
unique code number. A page has more than one swatch for just a single color, which
means; the luminance varies from light to dark for any color like yellow and has
many yellow colors. This Pantone Color Guide is used in the textile industry for color
matching with dyed samples after the fabric coloration process.

Fig: A sample of Pantone book

Objective of the experiment

 To know about Pantone book
 To know how to match the standard sample and trial sample compared to
pantone book
  To know how find out color from pantone book according to given color code
 To know different types of pantone book
 To know why pantone book important in textile

History of Pantone
PANTONE was founded in 1962, at a time when the company only made color cards
for cosmetics, paints, and property furnishing companies. The company was then
bought by “Lawrence Herbert”, who had been an employee of the company since
1956. In 1963, he invented the first color matching system “PANTONE”. The
Pantone Guide has become very popular in the color matching system, as activities
in the dyeing and printing industry today cannot be imagined without the Pantone
Color Guide. These are small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard
sheets held together on one side with a series of related color swatches.

Importance of Pantone Color Guide in Textile Industry

The Pantone Color Guide is a blessing in disguise for fabric coloration in the textile
industry. Suppose the buyer tells you from America that he will need 1000 kg of dyed
fabric with a ‘light peach cream color’. But how do you know exactly what color he is
talking about? In this case, your colleagues will give different opinions, but the
correct decision can’t be reached. But this will be easier if you have a Pantone Color
Guide, if the buyer says the Pantone number like “Peach Fuzz 13-1023 TPX” instead
of the name of the color, then you can easily find that color from the Pantone Guide.
In other words, Pantone Book has made it easy to get ideas about specific colors
before dyeing and matching colors with the samples after the coloration process.

Types of Pantone Color Guides

Pantone guide plays an important role in the textile industry in fabric dyeing and
printing and also for shade matching. There are mainly two types of Pantone Guides-
TCX & TPX. Both are designed from the Pantone Textile Color System.

1) Textile Color on Cotton (TCX)

These are colorful pure “Cotton Swatch” in each individual color. It looks like a
passport guide or chipset. However, TCX Pantone books are much more
expensive. Because it is a complete cotton swatch, it can cost hundreds to
thousands of dollars.

2) Textile Color on Paper (TPX)

In this case, it is made of “Paper Swatch” instead of the cotton swatch, and
each swatch is colored in a unique color. The TPX Pantone Book is much
cheaper than the TCX. The TPX Pantone book has recently been updated to
the TPG Pantone book. TPX & TPG colors are the same, but the TPG is
much more eco-friendly. (Textile Paper Green – All lead and chromium
content removed from TPX products for eco-friendly update)

Uses of TCX and TPX

We already know about TCX & TPX. But we do not know which should be used in
which cases or for what purpose. Both TCX and TPX are Pantone color standards,
but they are designed separately for different purposes. Here TCX stands for “Textile
Cotton eXtend” and TPX stands for “Textile Paper eXtend”. TCX is commonly used
as a standard color swatch for reactive and dispersed dyeing and TPX is followed for
pigments, which means it is used as a color standard for printing.

Differences between the Shades of TCX and TPX

Many times the buyer gives the color code from TCX to the manufacturer when
ordering, but in case the manufacturer has TPX Pantone book instead of TCX. After
dyeing the fabric matched with TPX, they noticed that the shade did not match. Now
the main reasons why there is a difference between the shades of TCX and TPX in
the same color code are analyzed below:

● There is a little difference between the Fabric & Paper versions of the system.
Here, TCX is the standard color swatch dyed on poplin fabric and TPX is the
standard color swatch printed on paper. Since TPX is a color printed on
paper, its color lightness and brightness will be a little higher than TCX. On
the other hand, since TCX is a color applied on cotton fabric, its color depth
will be higher than TPX; also the brightness will be less.

● So, the shades of TPX and TCX of the same Pantone number are different. In
this case, TPX is 15% lighter than TCX or TCX is 15% deeper than TPX.
Because of the high cost of TCX, many buying houses have TPX and they
write shades from TCX when ordering, but after dyeing the shades match with
TPX which makes the shade look dark to them. So even if the Pantone
number matches, the difference between TCX and TPX depth will remain and
TCX & TPX can never be considered the same thing.

Significance of PANTONE Numbers

TCX and TPX numbers are not just unique
numbers; they have some special meaning
that reflects some of the characteristics of
the colorant. We know that there are three
color attributes, namely: Hue, Value, and
Chroma. The Pantone number here consists
of 6 digits, the first two digits of which
express the Lightness of the color, the
middle two digits represent the Hue, i.e.,
Red/ Yellow/Green/Blue, and the last two
digits represent Chroma i.e., the
dullness/vividness or depth of the color.

Conclusion
The importance of the Pantone Color Guide in the textile industry is immense. For
those who work in the textile sector, especially in the dyeing and printing section, the
issues of shade matching have to be maintained carefully. This Pantone guide has
made their job a lot easier. This article gives a clear idea about the significance of
the Pantone number and the difference between the shades of TCX & TPX.