Specifying white plastics

Hi all,
This is an issue I have run into a number of times.
Manufacturers always want a Pantone colour for plastics, but a lot don’t accept the plastic chips.
Obviously Pantone don’t do whites as they are primarily for print applications.
I would love to get for specificity with white selection as well. The Dulux range has a great range of whites, but again, most manufacturers don’t have access to this.
Any ideas, tips etc. from anyone here?

PPG or Sherwin-Williams spec

RAL (9003 signal white for example)
Munsell has some nice neutral whites as well

thanks. have you had success with Chinese manufacturers with these?

I have used RAL before, and it seems to work. Still a little restricted in range.
Will try Munsell.
Cheers

Pantone has great whites from their textiles ranges. I use this to specify products and graphics. My favorite by far: Blanc de blanc.

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Good stuff. we may have to purchase one of the textile books.

With all of them? No.

With all of them that I use? Yes.

As with everything in life, it depends.

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I would try PPG or RAL.

I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with a vendor that didn’t accept a “golden sample” to use as a reference. This is still my favorite way to do it, cut a reference material in half and send one piece to the vendor and keep the other for color matching (if you can find something you want to match in real life of course). You would be amazed how many times I’ve been to a vendor in Asia and their Pantone book is completely sun faded… and the unfaded Pantone was matched perfectly, it just didn’t match my Pantone book kept in a closed cabinet away from sunlight… :sun_with_face:

Sorry for waking up a dead thread, but I ran into the same thing and thought I’d share my take. For plastics, you want to use RAL, not Pantone which is made for ink/paper. Or at least another paint color system. Classic RAL has a good ranges of whites, black and grey, so even with only 200+ colors it works for most projects. As a result, it is a lot cheaper to get setup. Classic RAL has been around for 70+ years and standard in Industry. If you need more color, go to RAL Design. RAL has plastic chips for both Classic (P1) and Design (P2) and they are infinitely better than Pantone, as they include a variation of textures and thicknesses. Now manufacturers demanding Pantone is another issue, and that’s probably due to the influence of the graphic design industry. In this case specify your master in RAL and include the closest conversion to Pantone. Also RAL Classic color fan is $25 vs $217 for Pantone Coated & Uncoated.