HEX to Pantone Converter

A HEX code such as #c8102e is three numbers from 0 to 255 written in hexadecimal: how much red, green and blue light a screen should emit in the sRGB color space. It describes a color only as far as the monitor showing it is calibrated, and it can only name colors inside the sRGB gamut.

A PANTONE color is a numbered recipe for a physical ink in the Pantone Matching System, printed as one premixed spot color rather than built from cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots. Each number exists in a coated version (C, printed on glossy coated paper) and an uncoated version (U, on absorbent uncoated stock); the same ink looks more saturated on coated paper, which is why brand manuals always write the suffix. The 2023 Formula Guide holds 2,390 solid colors; the fashion and interiors system (TCX, TPG codes) is a different library and is not covered here.

Pantone publishes an sRGB simulation of each color so it can be shown on a screen at all. This page compares your HEX with a table of 907 such reference values for the numbered solid colors, PANTONE 100 to PANTONE 5875. Named colors of the system (Process Blue, Reflex Blue, Warm Red, the Black series, metallics and pastels) are not in the table and cannot come up as matches.

Measuring distance on the RGB numbers themselves gives poor results: the eye does not see equal steps of R, G and B as equal changes, and a step of 20 in green is far more visible than the same step in blue. Both colors are therefore converted to CIELAB, the space designed so that a distance of about 1 is the smallest difference a person can notice, and compared with the CIEDE2000 formula, which corrects Lab's known weaknesses in blues and near-neutrals. The five smallest distances are shown; the rest of the table is never listed.

The word next to each ΔE translates the number:

Spot inks are not limited to the sRGB gamut: many oranges, greens and blues and all the fluorescents (PANTONE® 801 to PANTONE 807) are more saturated than any monitor can show, so their published sRGB values are already compromises. The screen you look at adds its own error unless it is calibrated, and room light changes how a printed swatch appears.

The reference values themselves vary by source and year. This table lists PANTONE 186 as #ce1126, while Pantone's current coated simulation of the same color is #c8102e; the distance between the two is under ΔE 3. Since November 2022 the Pantone libraries are no longer bundled with Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign and come through the Pantone Connect extension, whose values differ again from the older Solid Coated books. That is why other converters return other numbers for the same HEX.

Use the list to shortlist candidates, compare them in a physical guide, and write the full name with its suffix into the print specification, for example PANTONE 186 C. If the job is printed in CMYK anyway, the spot color is only a reference for the printer's own conversion.

The screen primaries show the limits of matching. None of them exists as a spot ink, so the nearest numbers are 5 to 11 ΔE away, and the table has no plain black or white at all: those are named colors (Black, Process Black) outside the numbered range. CMYK here is the profile-free formula from the HEX to CMYK page; the PANTONE® numbers are this page's own results.

Approximate match by perceptual color distance (CIEDE2000) from publicly available sRGB reference values. This site is not affiliated with Pantone LLC. PANTONE® is a registered trademark of Pantone LLC.

Numbers appear here only to identify the nearest reference values. The color library is not reproduced: there is no list to browse or download, and the authoritative colors are the ones in Pantone's printed guides and software.