Here at Personalised Cookies we always aim to match your branding colours. However as we print with ink jet printers we may not always be able to match them exactly - especially when it comes to PURPLE.

Here’s why inkjet printers that use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) struggle with purples/violets:

1. Limited Gamut of CMYK

• Printers don’t use RGB light (like screens), they use ink.
• CMYK inks can only produce a subset of visible colors, called the CMYK color gamut.
• Purples and violets fall outside the printable CMYK gamut — meaning they can’t be reproduced as vividly as you see them on a screen.

2. The Magenta Problem

• A true, pure magenta pigment is hard to make. Printing inks use a magenta that leans slightly red.
• When you mix this magenta with cyan to try to make purple, the result is often a muddy violet or bluish purpleinstead of a bright one.
• So even though theoretically CMY should give pure secondary colors (red, green, blue), in practice the pigments shift things off target.

3. Paper & Light Absorption

• Inks don’t glow like pixels — they absorb and reflect light.
• Paper type, brightness, and coating affect how “deep” purples look. On plain paper, purples tend to look duller because ink soaks in and scatters light.

4. Screen vs Print

• On screen (RGB), purple is made by mixing full red and full blue light, which looks vibrant.
• On print (CMYK), you rely on magenta + cyan inks which just can’t reproduce the same spectral purity.

That’s why inkjet printers often render purples as either too blue or too reddish, and never quite as saturated as what you see on screen.