matching web fabric to real fabric – can it be done?
Last night I had the pleasure of being the first guest in a telecast hosted by The Professional Quilter magazine. The topic was digital-related and it covered a few of the topics in my book. I was looking forward to taking questions. However, the format of the telecast didn’t allow for me to hear questions from participants but rather to take them through email. The following is one of the questions I received. I’m sharing it and my answer in the hopes that it will be helpful to someone else in this situation.
The question:
I am trying to sell hand-dyed fabrics and am concerned about my potential customers being concerned that the color on their monitor will be the same as the fabric they receive. I was thinking of adding a swatch of white to each photo? Will this help.
Answer:
It won’t hurt, and it may give a point of reference knowing that the swatch should read white. Thus if the white fabric reads darker than it should, chance are the hand-dyed fabric would also be darker.
The main question is can you match what your customer sees on his/her monitor to the actual fabric they receive. The answer is you generally cannot guarantee what your customer sees. Why? There are several factors that are outside of your control. They include:
- how the person’s monitor is calibrated (if it’s even calibrated);
- what the age of the monitor is;
- where the person views the monitor — is it in direct sunlight? shade? a room with brightly colored wall? and so on;
- is there is a busy, colorful background pattern surrounding the displayed website;
- even the person’s vision and color perception will come into play.
To alert your customers, consider including a statement on your fabric page that the color being displayed may vary from the actual color of the fabric. If color is critical, the person should contact you for more information. Something like ..
“I have made every effort to photographically represent that fabric as best as possible. However, because of the wide variations in monitor quality and color settings, I cannot guarantee that what you see on your monitor will exactly match the actual fabric color. If color is critical and you have any questions about the fabric, please contact me and I will be happy to help.”
If you have a digital-related question that you’d like to ask me, please drop me a line and I’ll try to help.
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