Identify tartans in particular colours

Many people like to wear a tartan with historical or family meaning to them. But it is also fine to choose a tartan just because you want a particular look.

There are three distinct ways to get a tartan in the colour shades you want:

1. Search by tartan name
2. Search by colour shade
3. Create a new tartan design

Search by tartan name

Many tartans have been produced and recorded over the years with distinctively different colourways than their more common designs. These have often been distinguished by their creators or by archivists with names such as Ramsay Blue, Thomson Blue, MacKay Blue, or Scott Red, Leslie Red or, Ross Red.

There are also lots of tartans, particularly dance tartans, that are primarily described through their dominant colours. These may be named with names such as Melrose Blue, Melrose Turquoise, or Melrose Green.

There are many other examples of colours being included in tartan names for one reason or another. This means you can simply use the tartan search and enter colour names and you will be offered a range of designs that mostly include that colour. The results will be a bit random, but sometimes serendipity is good.

Search by colour shade

More reliably, we offer a sophisticated colour search tool, baked right into the search architecture. This lets you select one or more shades from the colour palette you'll see there, and your results will immediately be filtered down to designs including the shades you've selected, giving priority to the colours you picked first. To remove a colour (or push it further down the priority list) just click on it again to deselect, then click to reselect it again.

Create a new tartan design

Finally, if you really can't find the perfect tartan design in your perfect colours, why don't you design your own. Then you'll have the full range of shades to pick from. If you're sending your design for weaving, we may have to tweak it to produce in the nearest yarns available with your chosen fabric. But if you're getting fabrics or products printed, it should arrive in more or less the shades you've picked (bearing in mind our words of warning that however good the technology, 100% colour accuracy is never possible).

Note

Remember that tartan colours are sometimes named differently than you might expect… “ancient red” looks orange; “ancient green” or “ancient blue” can look almost brown. Some purples may look blue to some eyes, or vice versa. And so on. So try a few alternatives as you search.