: Choosing colors that work well on projectors When specifying colors for use in a software user interface, what's the best way to ensure that those colors will look acceptable on all common display

@Holmes874

Projectors are crap. It's not an issue of picking the right color, it's just an issue of projector technology being really crappy.

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@Odierno310

Unfortunately Philips answer is correct; that said i produce small works weekly to be displayed on both a projector and on the web and am able to make both mediums look reasonably similar.

In my experience; while almost all home monitors are not colour calibrated, the variation is quite slight (as perceived by Joe Public). i.e. something that was meant to be dark red will kind of resemble something dark red - most of the time.

Projectors, on the other hand, vary wildly. We use two main projectors (different models); we've now got the colour temperature to be somewhat similar, but both contrast luminosity are not even close between projectors, let alone when compared to the laptop screen. i.e what is dark red on the screen could very well appear black from the projector. This is just a reality that has to be considered when producing the art work.

Also with projectors there are some of the additional factors to consider that can dramatically affect the projected image:


distance between projector and surface
ambient light of room
direct light on surface
age of projector blub
projector display technologies


if you can control most of these factors, in that they don't change or change very in-frequently, you can start plan your art works so that the projected image will sort-of resemble what you see on your screen.

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@Michele215

The short answer is that you can't reasonably ensure that colors are going to look good on all, or even a wide variety of, display devices.

The long answer is that this is possible but there are a number of caveats:


You need to invest in color-calibration devices and the truly good ones don't come cheap
For internal use, you would also need to strictly control lighting in the rooms you are reviewing
As soon as you release your product to anyone outside of the review team, like your customers, all of that work you put into it is for naught.


There are some battles that, really, just aren't worth fighting unless you have a clear business case that color management is core to your business.

UPDATE per OP's Edit:

Since there is such a wide variety of monitors and projectors out there, it is impossible give a range in the RGB gamut that will guarantee that those colors would look good in even half the cases. Even if there were, I'm sure your designers would balk at such a limitation.

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