Pantones, how do YOU choose yours? Building an on brand colour palette for your kidswear range.

In my decade working as a childrenswear designer for retailers big and small I’ve spent many an hour pouring over pantone books and selecting pantone chips to build commercial colour palettes. Scouring the pinks for something sweet and pretty, but not too twee and dated. Deliberating over greys to make sure they feel soft enough to sit within a print while strong enough to create crisp outlines.

Colour can make or break an all-over-print or garment collection and the best palettes instantly signal to a customer that a style belongs in your brand’s range, without even glimpsing a hang tag.

When you know your brand inside and out the perfect palette falls into place seamlessly, hands leaf through colour guides almost autonomously to find your tried and trusted colours.

Getting to that point, however, can be tricky.

So here are a few tips for choosing pantones I’ve learnt along the way.

Start at the beginning and choose the right pantone book

A pantone book is a pantone book, right? Nope, sorry.

Although the pantone colour ‘recipe’ may be the same for two styles the end material and finish make a huge difference to how the colour appears. Which is why pantone offer books for different fabrications and finishes.

Designing graphic and digital styles you’ll want the formula guides offering both coated (shiny finish) and uncoated (matt finish) books for selecting colours. In a fashion setting these colour books are particularly useful when working with licensed characters where the colours need to be recognisable across TV series’, books and garments - I don’t think the coated references of Peppa Pig will ever leave my brain they are so consistently used.

Whereas for fabric colours (printed or dyed) it’s the fashion, home and interiors guide where you’ll find your colours, available in an array of printed paper or fabric colour chips dependent on your need and budget.

You also have the lovely little extras like neon's, metallics and pastels the world of colours is vast.

Time for some market research, let’s pop to the shops

Now you know which pantone guide to reference you need to think about the colour sectors you want to work in. This will very much be influenced by where your brand is positioned in the market and the product type you’re working with.

Getting out to the high-street and looking at kids clothing in real life is fab for getting a handle on this.

Yes, you can see a lot on screen, but that back light can be deceptive.

Light from screens, shop fittings and natural light all bring a different nuance to your colour choices and you want your customer to love them in the full spectrum.

So, let’s go shopping (well browsing).

If your ideal customer is a fan of Newbie, The Little White Company and Happyology for example, you’ll be looking at softer colours with a more natural feel. However, if your brand is positioned alongside Boden, John Lewis and Arket, colours will be clean and bright with a modern vibe. 

Product type too will play in to your colour palette.

When creating a kids swimwear range you need to think about safety and visibility in the water (perhaps drawing on those delicious neon colours we talked about) alongside looking at where your competitors are positioning themselves.

Whereas building a range of newborn sleepsuits means thinking about washability (for all those poonamis) and the ‘gifting’ customer, with sweet tasteful pastel shades alongside lots of white and cream or perhaps monochrome and high contrast to engage baby’s developing vision.

To help build brand recognition, create a core palette

If your brand is established, you will likely have a core group of pantone colours as part of your brand guidelines.

You probably know your core colours by heart you reach for them so regularly

I was introduced to my go-to navy, Medieval Blue 19-3933 TCX, by one of the lovely designers at my first job in kidswear , bright without being brash, rich but not too dark and I still pull it all these years later.

Working with the same basic colours season on season may sound dull, but building consistency in your ranges helps customers recognise your brand on a subconscious level reinforcing your label’s positioning each time they see your products out in the world.

For new and emerging kids clothing labels defining the core brand colours is my starting point, selecting the perfect shades that bring the desired aesthetic and support your range’s market positioning. Once your essential colours are set, slipping your seasonal trend colours - like those in my SS27 kids trends - alongside, allows variation and newness while ensuring you can merchandise multiple ranges cohesively.

See, supportive, not dull.

View your colours in a variety of lighting

Time dedicated to selecting pantones is time well spent.

It can feel laborious when you’re picking over the pantone chips, but the time you’ll save going back and forth on strike off and sample comments not to mention the money saved in reduced sampling will make up for it in spades. Too easily pushed to the bottom of the to-do list when you’ve exciting new artwork to create, this is not a task you want to save to the end of the day when the light has died and the colours don’t feel the same.

If you want your colours to sit beautifully in your customer’s wardrobe, they need sense checking in both natural and ambient lighting.

This is talking ideal world of course. We’ve all had days where time has slipped away, and it’s more important to get a sample in the production timetable and sense check it later than wait for the perfect lighting. Particularly in the light poor days of mid-winter in the UK.

As much as we sometimes wish they could, critical paths do not wait for sunnier days!

Always request print strike-offs and lab dips

You’ve picked the perfect pantones, you’re super confident they’ll hit the mark but don’t let it go to your head. Skipping parts of the sampling process won’t, in reality, speed production up if your colours are off.

Strike offs and lab dips are important.

Even the most exquisite pantone shade can be affected by fabrication, print technique and balance of colours within a print. Action that strike off and, I know I sound like a broken record here, review it in natural and ambient lighting.

Keep in mind variations across fabrics, dye-lots and print techniques are to be expected to some degree and will require a commercially tolerant eye. Then communicate any feedback to your production partners in clear concise language, with visual references (where possible) or even better get on a video call with them to save all the back and forth.

In my experience, if you want your styles to hit the mark and sell through then selecting pantones needs a little more time invested than ‘oh that’s a cute colour’ and hitting send.

Taking a step back to think of cohesive range building, market placement and incorporating those shades that spark joy are all part of the process when building beautiful prints and ranges. Hopefully, once you find a groove with choosing colours for your brand it will be a stage you come to love just as much as piecing together the range plan.

Any hot takes or colour selection hacks you swear by, I’d love to hear.