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Barcode Colour Guide & Rules

Acceptable Colour Logic

  • Black & Cold Colours: Blue, purple, green, and dark brown are highly visible to scanners, making them ideal for the vertical bars.
  • White & Warm Colours: Yellow and red are largely invisible to barcode scanners, making them perfect for backgrounds.
  • Contrast is Key: Vertical bars must always be printed in a significantly darker colour than the background template.

Unacceptable Combinations

  • Light Bars on Dark Backgrounds: Scanners look for dark lines on light reflective spaces. Reversing this prevents successful decoding.
  • Red on White: Red bars cannot be read by standard red laser scanners, as the bars disappear into the reflection.
  • Metallic Inks: Gold, silver, and other metallic options reflect light entirely away from the scanner lens rather than scattering it, causing immediate scanning failure.

Critical Recommendations Before Printing

Black bars on a white background remains the absolute best configuration for retail reliability.

When deviating from default options, always execute a test print on the actual packaging material. Verify readability across multiple hardware scanning models, as minor calibration discrepancies affect performance thresholds on complex custom combinations.