ColorKitFree Pantone to RGB reference
Pantone to RGB for 77 reference inks
A spot color has no exact RGB equivalent — it is an ink recipe, not a triplet — so what this free reference gives you is the screen value Pantone publishes for each of 77 inks, which is the honest version of the answer. Search by number, name or hex; every entry carries its coated chip, a modelled uncoated preview with the ΔE between them, and a flag when the ink is one a four-color build cannot match. PANTONE® is a trademark of Pantone LLC and this page is an independent reference, not an authorised one.
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- No signup
- 77 reference inks
- Coated and uncoated
- Unofficial reference
Read this first. PANTONE® is a registered trademark of Pantone LLC and the Matching System is a licensed product; this page is an independent reference and is not affiliated with, authorised by or endorsed by Pantone. The values below are the screen approximations Pantone publishes for the 77 inks listed — a fraction of a library that runs past 2,100 solid colors — and a spot ink is a physical recipe, so no hex code, calibrated monitor or licensed app substitutes for a printed chip when a color is being signed off.
Coated (C) — published
Uncoated (U) — modelled
PANTONE Reflex Blue C
Reflex Blue · stock shift ΔE 10.4
Outside a four-color process gamut — a CMYK build of this one will visibly miss.
- HEX
#001489 - RGB
rgb(0, 20, 137) - HSL
hsl(231, 100%, 27%) - U preview
#2A238A
Showing 77 of 77 inks.
Press Ctrl+V anywhere on the page to drop in a code such as 186 C — no need to click the field first.
Base inks of the solid system
The fourteen inks every other solid color is mixed from. Eleven of them sit outside a four-color process gamut, which is the practical argument for a fifth plate.
Numbered solid coated inks
The numbered inks that turn up most often in brand guides — corporate blues, sports reds, the gray families and the two metallics.
Color of the Year, 2000 onwards
These carry TCX codes, not solid coated ones: the fashion, home and interiors library is dyed on cotton, so a TCX number and a C number are different systems that happen to share a brand.
How to look up a Pantone color in RGB
Three steps, and the caveat you need to pass on with the value.
Find the ink
Type the code into the search box — 186 C, Reflex, 17-1230 or a hex value all narrow the list, and the tokens are matched independently so “cool 11” finds Cool Gray 11 C. Pasting a code anywhere on the page selects it directly and the word Pantone is stripped before matching, so a string copied straight out of a brand guide works as-is.
Compare the coated chip with the uncoated preview
The two swatches at the top are the published coated value and a model of how the same ink lands on uncoated stock, with the distance between them given as a ΔE. That number is the reason the C and U suffixes exist: the ink is identical and the paper is doing all of the work, which on strong colors is a shift big enough to read across a room.
Take the value, and check the process flag first
Copy the hex, the rgb() or the hsl() form from the list on the right. If the ink is flagged as outside the four-color gamut, treat the hex as a screen stand-in only — eleven of the fourteen base inks carry that flag, including Reflex Blue and Orange 021, and a CMYK build of any of them will miss by an amount your client will notice before you do.
Technical specifications
| Inks covered | 77 in three groups: 14 base inks of the solid system, 35 numbered solid coated inks common in brand guides, and 28 Color of the Year entries from 2000 to 2025 |
|---|---|
| Coated values | The sRGB approximations Pantone publishes for screen use, transcribed rather than derived. The full solid library runs past 2,100 colors, so this is a reference subset by design |
| Uncoated preview | Modelled, not published: chroma multiplied by 0.88 and lightness raised by 6% of the headroom to 100, computed in CIE LCH and reported with its ΔE from the coated chip |
| Process-gamut flag | Carried by the inks Pantone's own guides mark as unmatchable in a four-color build — 11 of the 14 base inks, plus 8 of the numbered set |
| Search | Whitespace-separated tokens matched independently against code, name and hex, so partial input in any order narrows the list; pasting a code selects it outright |
| Metallics | 877 Silver and 871 Gold are included as matte stand-ins. A specular ink has no sRGB equivalent at all, and the page says so on the swatch rather than in a footnote |
| Not offered | Reverse matching from a hex code to the nearest ink, which would require the full licensed library and measured spectral data to mean anything |
| Cost and processing | Free, no signup, no lookup limit, and the table never leaves your tab |
Frequently asked questions
Is there an exact RGB value for a Pantone color?
No, and the mismatch is structural rather than a matter of precision. A spot color is a physical ink mixed to a recipe, and what you see depends on the pigment, the paper, the ink film thickness and the light in the room; sRGB is a triplet describing what a display should emit. Pantone publishes a screen approximation for each ink so that designers have something to work with, and that is exactly what the values here are — an approximation with a publisher, not a conversion with an answer.
Why did Pantone libraries disappear from Photoshop and Illustrator?
Adobe removed the bundled Pantone libraries in November 2022 when the licensing arrangement between the two companies ended, and access moved to a Pantone Connect subscription. Files saved with the old swatches kept working, but newly opened documents showed the missing colors as black, which is why so many brand guides written before 2022 quote a hex code alongside the ink name. If you need the full library rather than a reference subset, Connect or a physical fan deck is where it now lives.
What do the C, U and M suffixes after the number mean?
They name the paper, not the ink: C is coated, U is uncoated and M is matte. The same pigment prints darker and more saturated on coated stock, because a sealed surface holds the ink film on top rather than letting it sink into the fibre, so 186 C and 186 U are two appearances of one recipe and Pantone assigns them separate published values. Quoting a code without its suffix is the most common omission in a brand guide and the one that causes the most reprints.
Why is a TCX number not interchangeable with a solid coated number?
Because they belong to different libraries with different substrates. TCX codes such as 17-1230 come from the Fashion, Home and Interiors system, where the standard is dyed cotton, while the four-digit and named codes come from the graphics system, where the standard is ink on paper. The Color of the Year is always announced as a TCX number, which is why matching it in print means finding the closest solid ink rather than looking up the same code with a C on the end.
Why is the uncoated column modelled instead of looked up?
Because reproducing a second published value for every ink is a licensing question, and a model that states its own parameters is more honest than a table that implies more precision than it has. The preview drops chroma by 12% and lifts lightness by 6% of the remaining headroom, which follows the direction and rough size of the shift uncoated stock produces. Use it to set expectations in a mockup; use a printed U chip to sign anything off.
Can I go the other way and find the nearest Pantone to my hex code?
This page deliberately does not offer it, because nearest-match against a 77-ink subset would give confident answers that are frequently wrong. Reverse matching only means something against the full library, and even then a ΔE computed between two sRGB approximations is not the ΔE between a screen and an ink — that one needs a spectrophotometer and a measured chip. Where a genuine match matters, hold the physical guide next to the printed sample under a D50 light.
Does searching here send the code anywhere?
No — the whole reference is an array inside the page's own JavaScript, so filtering is a string comparison against data already in memory. There is no lookup endpoint, nothing is requested per keystroke, and the list works with the network switched off.
About spot colors and their screen stand-ins
The Matching System solved a coordination problem, not a color-science one. Before it, an agency in one city and a printer in another had no shared vocabulary for “this red”, and every job started with an argument about a proof. Numbering a set of premixed inks and printing them on standard stock gave both ends of the chain the same physical object to point at. That is why a spot color has a fan deck rather than a formula: the reference is a piece of paper, and every digital value attached to it afterwards — including all 77 on this page — is a translation made for convenience.
The translation is worst exactly where brands care most. Eleven of the fourteen base inks sit outside what four process plates can reach, so Reflex Blue printed as CMYK comes back a duller, greyer navy and Orange 021 comes back closer to a tomato — which is why so many identities pay for a fifth plate on the stationery and quietly accept the process build on the brochure. If you are deciding between those two, the RGB to CMYK converter shows the size of the gap for a specific color, and the CMYK to RGB page handles the reverse case, where a printer has already sent you the four numbers they intend to run.
On the screen side the hex value is only the starting point of a design system. A brand ink gives you one color, and an interface needs a hover state, a disabled state, a tint for a table row and a border that is not the same weight as the fill — so the useful next move is to convert it with hex to HSL and derive the family by moving lightness. Overlaying it at partial opacity is where mockups go wrong most often: run it through RGBA to HEX to see the solid color it actually composites to. And when the brand has exactly one ink and a whole site to fill, the color wheel is a better way to find the secondaries than picking more inks out of the deck.
Where the lookup happens
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type, paste or open is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the tools carry on working after you disconnect from the network.