I published a blog post on this yesterday and that includes the link to download my free .zip file.
Zazzle Print Safe Color Palettes
To summarize the post:
I took the "Print-Friendly" color swatches as offered in the new customer interface (184 of them currently) and labeled them all with the corresponding HEX value as assigned by Zazzle.
Then I made it into four separate .png files I could upload to Zazzle and put them on a folded 5x7 card (the only product I could think of with four distinct and equally-sized print areas). And then I layered a 3-color svg behind the swatch images to provide three color areas for testing HEX values in. With all three sections of the svg being available at once to change colors on, you don't have to keep switching to Background or other layer/element to try out a HEX value.
I published my Print-Friendly color-helper card so I can open it anytime in the Design Tool for my own reference.
However, that doesn't do anyone else any good, you all will only be able to access it as the new customer interface. So I packaged the parts into a Zip file you can use to make your own Hidden reference product you can access in the Design Tool. The Zip includes 7 files including my original PSD file with all the un-flattened text labels so you can edit as you wish.
Link to download is in the blog post (no time limit on editing blog posts so just better way for me to share a link as I can edit/change it anytime in the future).
*In case anyone is wondering, I needed to put the palettes on four different "sides" of something because even on something big like a duvet or shower curtain, you still only have the one small view in the design tool and they needed to be large enough to see without zooming. But you have the parts to make a reference product in whatever way works for you, and also the PSD file for off-line reference.
When you select a swatch from the palette it shows you the Hex# for it.
⬅️ These are the values I labeled the swatches with.
My charts are just screenshots saved as pngs. If you use the eye-dropper to color-sample a swatch, you get a different value. This one selected here samples as #6D62AB. The difference on my screen is very faint but it's there. So to use the hex value Zazzle wants, you have to type it in.
The .svg is just there to provide fields for trying different colors without having to keep switching back & forth to the Background layer or other. Maybe you want to compare a sampled color from your image to one of Z's print-friendly values, or two Zazzle values to see if they look good together .... The SVG is just a means of providing a convenient way to check colors.
I looked at those charts and didn't really understand what they were telling me. So I decided heck, going to chart the Hex values for the swatches being suggested to customers myself and make is so I can refer to them right in the Design Tool since the "print-friendly" panel has only been implemented on the customer side so far.
The other odd thing about the chart Zazzle has on the Print Guidance page is that the Hex values given on the RGB side don't match the values in the Print-Friendly panel in the new customer interface.
Except for white (FFFFFF) and black (000000), none of the others match.
If I were going to make something exclusively using recommended "print safe" colors, I would use the values given in the panel customers have to choose from.
I tried once using CMYK mode in Photoshop and everything looked so drab it was really depressing, not at all the vibrant bright colors I enjoy. So I kept on with RGB mode and for the products I've ordered myself I was really impressed with how the printed colors turned out. This was most notable on leggings and a tote bag where I wasn't expecting much because fabric but they turned out amazing even though I had paid zero mind to CMYK vs RGB..
So like @Anne said, I don"t know what to make of the push now to design/upload in CMYK. Has something changed behind-the-scenes where it's now going to make a drastic difference?
Wow, impressive, @ColsCreations . Thank you!
I don't know I managed to work for almost 2 decades with RGB without any problem, and now suddenly that's not possible. Is that a downgrade in technology? Thousands of products already created with RGB. And assuming that most customers upload photos from their phone, how is that going to work out? These would be mostly RGB? Or not?
I'm getting seriously digitally challenged.
LOL, that's exactly what I did, @ColsCreations
Also, if I am correct, everything on a screen is RGB. So this new idea that we need to use CMYK just doesn't make any sense. You have to have WYSIWYG. Zazzle is consistently abandoning this idea, but if customers don't get what they see on a screen, they will be disappointed. In the DOS era it was not possible to print in RGB colors, but in 2025 that should be no problem. I don't like Zazzle regressing to the DOS time, but that is what they do.
O, and don't worry about market placement. I just did a search on Christmas wine gift boxes and this is the result:
I am seeing several spam items, and they are all over the place, regardless what you search for.
Concluding: I will not follow this Zazzle "recommendation". (learned from the downgrade of the collections)
