If you’ve ever tried to coordinate the colors on your real estate web site, your business cards and letterhead, and your yard signs, you know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been working with a client who has just established his own brokerage.  We designed a logo for him, and we’ll design his brokerage web site to utilize the colors from the logo.  He also needs yard signs, business cards and letterhead.

You’d think doing those tasks should be fairly simple.  But, you’d be wrong.  If you find yourself in the same situation, here’s a brief primer on colors.

Website Colors

When you’re identifying colors on websites, you use six-digit HEX numbers.  For example, 000000 is the HEX equivalent of black.  Each pair of numbers represents combinations of Red, Green and Blue.  The HEX numbers are used in HTML to identify colors.

HEX colors translate well into a color model known as RGB.  Black can be identified in RGB as 0-0-0.  That indicates a lack of any color, of course.  Equipment like monitors and television sets display colors using RGB.  So, it’s fairly easy to display the color you want on a monitor because it uses somewhat the same method to identify the color.

However, you know that sometimes you see different colors on different monitors.  In the same way, you can really mess up your television if you adjust the color settings to be too green or red, and so on.

Printing Colors

A printer who is producing your business cards and letterhead uses another color model, CMYK.  Unfortunately, the conversion from HEX or RGB to CMYK is not very direct.  Therefore, if you like the website color you see on your monitor, you’ll have to work with your printer to choose CMYK colors that are consistent.

Sign Printing

If you’re having signs prepared, unless you’re using cut vinyl, you’ll probably run into yet another color model, Pantone colors.  Pantone colors do not directly translate into any other type of color model.  So, if you want your sign colors to match your website and business cards, you’ll have to work with the sign vendor to pick a color that is consistent.

As you can imagine, coordinating production of all of these real estate marketing materials can drive you crazy.  And, we don’t want to even think about what happens if you want to get some coffee mugs printed.

The important thing to remember is that you want to maintain a consistent “feeling” with your marketing materials.  If the colors are slightly different (and they probably will be), no one will notice but you.

If you saw a McDonald’s sign that used a slightly different shade of yellow, you’d still know it’s McDonald’s.