June 5, 2026 · 5 min read
Screens build colour with light. Printers build colour with ink. That single difference explains almost every colour surprise you'll ever see between a design file and a finished print.
Monitors mix red, green and blue light to create colour, and because light is additive, combining all three at full strength produces white. RGB has an enormous range, including bright, saturated colours no ink can physically reproduce.
Printing lays down cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink, which work by subtracting light rather than adding it. Combining all four at full strength approximates black rather than white. CMYK's colour range is smaller than RGB's, particularly for neon colours and some deep blues.
A vivid RGB blue on your monitor may simply be a colour that no CMYK ink combination can reproduce. When that file goes to print, the press substitutes the closest achievable CMYK equivalent — usually slightly less saturated.
We build every design file in CMYK from the start rather than converting at the last minute, and soft-proof it against a calibrated colour profile so what you approve on screen is already an accurate preview of the press result — not an RGB file hoping for the best.