Weaving

A loom does not mix ink. It interlaces six base yarn colours — red, blue, green, gold, white and black — in different proportions, and the eye blends them at normal viewing distance into around 195 perceived shades. That is a real palette, but a discontinuous one: every colour in your file snaps to the closest combination the loom can actually make.

The range below is the whole of it, photographed as real woven swatches. Two things are worth noticing before you design. It is broad but distinctly earthy — there is no fluorescent anything, and no pure primary. And it is dense through the muted middle, which is where near-neighbour colours in your artwork will collapse onto the same blend and stop being distinguishable from one another.

Because matching is to the nearest available blend, the further a colour sits from that range the further it has to travel — and the more it changes on the way.

Fluorescent and neon shades move the most, because nothing in yarn comes close to them: bright yellows and greens are pulled toward gold and olive, and light or pastel tones generally read duller and earthier woven than they do on screen. Colours already in the muted part of the spectrum barely move at all, which is why designs built from that palette come back looking almost exactly as intended.

The practical consequence is that a design should be judged against the range, not against your monitor. If a colour is doing important work in your artwork, check whether anything near it exists in yarn before you commit.

There is no way for a loom to fade continuously. A gradient is rendered as a series of discrete bands, each one a different yarn blend, with a visible edge between them.

That is not a failure to design around so much as a property to design with. Gradients built from a few strong, deliberate steps look intentional and handsome. Gradients built as smooth 256-step fades look like banding, because that is exactly what they become.

Woven products are made in one of two finishes, and picking the wrong one is the most common cause of a disappointing result.

The photo finish is tuned for photographs and photorealistic imagery — it carries subtle tonal gradation and fine detail well. Used on bold graphic artwork it makes the colours look muddled and washed out.

The artwork finish is tuned for graphic designs with solid, separated colour blocks — it keeps them sharp and clean. Used on a photograph it produces patchy areas and visible banding between tones.

Saturation and brightness matter most under the artwork finish. A colour that is very light or very saturated has the fewest neighbours in the range, so it is the one most likely to come back as something you did not expect.

Bold shapes, strong outlines and clear separations between colours. Large, heavy type. Busy, textured compositions where no single fine detail carries the whole design.

Two things to avoid. Fine intricate detail simply is not reproducible at the scale a yarn occupies. And large flat areas of a single colour are surprisingly difficult — they show every small irregularity in the weave, which is why a pattern with visual activity across it looks better than an expanse of flat colour.

Transparent areas in your file are not woven as anything; they come through as the product’s own base colour, which makes transparency a usable design element rather than a problem.