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Traditional Chinese Colors Guide
Each color gets a full page, with the name in Chinese and pinyin, the values you need for screen and print, and three pairings from the same palette. Built for designers who want the story behind a color as well as its code.
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The Traditional Chinese Colors Guide gives 32 classic Chinese color names a page each, from Cinnabar and Gamboge to Sky After Rain and Raven Blue. It reads like a small magazine, but every page is also a working swatch you can pull values from.
What a color page holds
The top of each page carries the English name, the Chinese characters, the pinyin and a literal translation of the name. Next comes a single line of verse and a short paragraph on where the pigment or dye came from and what it was used for, with a row of keywords such as lacquer, porcelain or letter paper. The practical part sits underneath: HEX, RGB and CMYK values, a row of seven tints and shades, and three companion colors chosen from the same 32.
How the palette is arranged
The colors are grouped the way the contents page lists them: six reds, six yellows, six greens, six blues, four purples and four neutrals. The index at the back puts all 32 in three tables, so once you know which colors you want you can work from those pages alone.
The guide itself notes two limits worth knowing before you use it for client work. Traditional color values vary from source to source, so these are chosen to be usable rather than definitive, and the CMYK figures are an uncalibrated conversion. Ask a print shop for a proof before a large run.
Printing it
The pages are vector artwork, so text and swatches stay crisp at any size. Print at 100% (“Actual size”) on the file that matches your paper. Most pages carry a large block of solid color, and the printing notes in the download suggest matte paper of 120 gsm or heavier for the best result.
