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Barcode Color Guide

It is advisable to generate dark color barcode on the light background to differentiate between barcode and spaces. Best contrast to make scannable barcode is black bars on white background. Contrary, White color barcode on black background is not readable. Colored header and footer do not affect the readability of barcode.

Good Bar Colors:

BlackGreenBlueBrown

Good Space Colors:

WhiteRedYellowOrange

Barcode reader uses a red light to scan the reflected area, thus interprets the red background as white. Light color bars on light background and dark color bars on dark background are not scannable. There should be good contrast between bar color and background color.

Color combos to consider while designing barcodes:

Scan-able colors:

A Barcode color does matter when you scan it with a reader. The light and dark color contrast ratio is highly required by barcode scanners to scan barcodes easily in seconds. Difference between light and dark colors under the red laser beam of handheld scanner called Print Contrast Signal or simply PCS.

In the picture, blue barcode on Red background, dark brown barcode on an orange background and blue barcode on a white background are scannable while other is not.

In the following example good barcodes are indicated by green tick and bad barcodes are marked by Red Cross:

Colors with low or zero scan ability:

Barcodes with the light on light/dark on dark, red and white, blue and black, brown and black, green and black, textured background, patterns or transparency, invert, metallic, and gradient colors are unreadable by the scanner so avoid these combos. These patterns or color combos for barcodes are not recommended.

Blue on red, red on green, blue on orange, blue on yellow and black on white from left side, green bars on yellow background, green on white and blue bars on orange background from right side of sheet are scannable.

Some important key points to remember while printing color barcode:

Barcodes always get scanned with a color contrast ratio of 4:1.
Scanner won’t be able to scan a barcode with a low contrast ratio, i.e. a yellow barcode on white background.
Add background color (white, yellow, orange, red, etc) which cannot be seen by the barcode scanner.
Color on bars such as: blue, green, brown, and black appears black always stand out with better readability of the barcode while scanning with red laser beam of scanner.
Keep a light color margin around the barcode for better readability.
Avoid printing barcodes on shiny materials such as metal, ink, and paints because these materials reflect the red light of a barcode reader which causes unread ability.

Colored Barcode quality should test before use:

Whenever you think to print barcodes with different colors, we advised you to scan them with different barcode scanners at different positions. Because different barcode scanners have distinct color adjustments so it is better to scan your printed barcode once before shipment.