Please use this database as a guide -- perhaps a comprehensive one, but a guide (rather than absolute gospel) nonetheless. You should check the colors and shades carefully yourself, where possible, before relying on any conversion chart because:
Color comparisons are subject to lighting and personal preference. Even comparisons made in natural light may differ slightly depending on the viewer's latitude -- the angle of the sun can affect the color of its light!
Dye lots -- in both beads and threads -- can vary slightly.
Manufacturers do, on occasion, shift portions of their palette. That's why dates are given above for the sources -- note in particular that DMC shifted significant portions of their palette slightly in 1995. Click here for more information.
Bead texture (e.g., matte or luster) is difficult to duplicate in thread. In general, rayon threads are shinier than cotton or silk floss, which themselves are shinier than flower thread.
Some metallic beads present a special problem, since they can show several colors. These have been treated on the charts as "multiple colors" and shown as combinations of two or three thread colors (with a "+" between). In all cases the first thread number is the predominant color of the beads.
Although DMC, Anchor, Miyuki, Kreinik and others all use very broad color palettes, there isn't a perfect correlation among them. Some of the colors are very, very close but not quite an exact match. Blues, blue-greens, and turquoise are perhaps the most problematic, especially when correlating threads to beads.
When using the RBG color equivalents (for computer graphics display), please remember that individual monitors and display settings will affect the actual colors seen on the computer screen.
An extensive set of conversion charts in text form can be found in the Needlework Frequently Asked Questions (Needlework FAQs) documents for the rec.crafts.textiles.needlework Usenet newsgroup. This is a text file (not a searchable database), and many of the charts do *not* reflect the 1995 changes in DMC colors.
All that having been said, I hope you will find this information useful!
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