Why the Colour on Your Screen Is Never Exactly the Colour on the Jersey

Of all the complaints custom-kit buyers leave online, one comes up for every brand: "the colour was different from what I saw on screen". It is usually true, and it is usually nobody's fault. Here is what happens between a screen and a jersey, and what a maker can do to keep the two as close as possible.

Three reasons the colour moves

1. A screen emits light; a jersey reflects it. Your monitor builds colour from red, green and blue light (a hex code like #1E3A8A). Fabric has no light of its own: it reflects the room. A luminous screen blue and the same blue on a jersey under a floodlight are two different physical things.
2. Printers do not speak hex. A dye-sublimation printer works from ink references (Pantone-style swatches and the printer's own profiles). Every hex code has to be mapped to the nearest printable reference, and some screen colours, especially neon greens, electric blues and very saturated reds, have no exact equivalent in ink.
3. The ink is absorbed, not laid on top. Sublimation turns the ink into gas that bonds with white polyester fibres. The colour you get is the ink inside a white fabric, which is why it never peels, and also why it is always a shade off the pure screen value.

Every custom-kit maker, from the biggest to the smallest, works inside these three limits. Which is why the honest answer to "will it match my screen?" is: closely, not perfectly.

What MOMUTO does about it

We cannot change physics, so we take the measures that reduce the gap. Three of them:

• Colours we know will translate. Our Ready to Play designs and the colourways in the 3D designer use colours we have printed many times. Unrealistic brightness and contrast are avoided at the source.
• A designer tells you before we recreate your concept. Many concepts now arrive as AI renders, and AI loves colours that only exist on a screen: glowing, neon, impossibly saturated. When a mockup is not realistic in this sense, our designer says so and proposes the closest version that prints well, before anything is produced.
• Our own print test on every order. Before production, your design is printed in three or four shades and we keep the one that reflects the design best. It is not a 1:1 guarantee; it is the step that removes most of the surprises.

"A screen can't be matched one to one on fabric. It's simply not possible: the printer works with Pantone references, not hex codes, and the ink is absorbed by a white fabric, so every colour translates into something. What we can do is reduce the disappointment: we steer designs towards colours we know translate well, our designers flag a concept that isn't realistic before we recreate it, and every order goes through our own print test, three or four shades, and we keep the one that reflects the design best."
— Alberto, founder of MOMUTO

What you can do as a team

• Give us a reference, not a feeling. If a colour is critical (a club blue, a sponsor red), send the Pantone code or a physical item in that colour. We match the print to the reference, not to your screen.
• Avoid neon and glowing tones if an exact match matters to you. Deep blues, reds, greens, black and white translate the most faithfully.
• Look at the mockup on two screens (phone and laptop) before approving it. If they already disagree with each other, the fabric will sit somewhere in between.
• Know what is covered. A slight tone difference is normal and not a defect; a kit that differs from the approved mockup is, and is replaced (see our returns policy).

The rest of what makes a jersey good or bad, the fabric itself, is covered in what are football jerseys made of and on our printing and materials page.

Frequently asked questions

Read next: what are football jerseys made of? · not all custom jerseys are equal.