Swatches

Display your colors, patterns and materials available to customers.

What are swatches?

Swatches are small, but very useful visual indicators that display the colors, patterns and materials in which a product is available to customers.

Instead of displaying the options as plain text, swatches provide a more intuitive and engaging way for customers to interact with the available choices. You can either use color hex codes, the variant images or upload your own custom swatch images to display on your product variants.

mode-striped-swatches.jpg

How to set up swatches

Steps

  1. Open the Theme Editor, and click on Theme Settings > Swatches.
  2. Select Enable swatches
  3. Within the Swatch option name setting, enter the variant option title.
    mode-swatch-settings-4.jpg
  4. Within the Swatch colors list settings, enter the color followed by : followed by the hex code (which should start with a #).
    (Example Red:#ff0000, Blue:#0000ff, Green:#008000). Refer to the image example below.
    mode-swatch-settings-5.jpg
    Each color should be on a separate line
    image.jpg

Striped swatches

Follow the same method as above. The only difference is you can string two or three codes together. Do not include the : in the middle, only include the # to separate between hex codes. Refer to the image example below.

mode-striped-swatches-2.jpg

Display swatches on collections

Steps

  1. Open the Theme Editor, and click on Theme Settings > Swatches.
  2. Within the Product cards settings, you have three options. Choose the show the swatches Same line as price, Below price or Do not show

Variant images as swatches

Steps

  1. Open the Theme Editor, and click on Theme Settings > Swatches.
  2. Within the Swatch method settings, set the dropdown to Variant image.
    mode-swatch-settings-3.jpg

Note

It is important to add Variant images to ensure that images are displayed for your product variants. Without them, no images will be displayed. The theme cannot anticipate which specific images you intend to display.
mode-variant-images.jpg

Custom images as swatches

If you prefer using your own images instead of hex codes or variant images, you can upload custom images that will be shown as swatches.

Steps

  1. Create a PNG or JPG image file for each color. Aim to match the size of the Icon size setting to prevent any stretching or image blurring. Maintaining consistent size and aspect ratio across all image files is recommended to prevent cropping.
  2. Name each file to match the handle of the variant color title, replacing spaces with a dash (-) and keeping the file name lowercase. For example, if the variant is named "Fire Engine Red" name the file "fire-engine-red.png"
  3. Remove any special characters, use only the Latin/Roman alphabet and standard characters (a-z) only. For instance, "waldgrün.png" should be renamed to "waldgrun.png."
  4. Open the Shopify admin and click on Content > Files.
  5. Select Upload files to upload your images.
  6. Open the Theme Editor, and click on Theme Settings > Swatches.
  7. Within the Swatch option name setting, enter the variant option title. This is the title you give that your variants fall under.
  8. Within the Swatch color list settings, enter the name of the followed by : followed by the file name. Each color should be on a separate line.
    mode-swatch-settings-6.jpg

FAQs

Will swatches still work when the store language is changed?

Yes. Under swatch settings, you will want to add the translations of your variant title in other languages.

Steps

  1. Open the Theme Editor, and click on Theme Settings > Swatches.
  2. In the Color option name settings, add translations, separating each word with a comma and no spaces in between.
    image__23_-min.jpg
  3. Check your translation app. Please note, Shopify's built-in translation app lacks an auto-translation feature, it is crucial to consistently confirm and auto-translate whenever modifications are made otherwise the swatches won't display.

Why are my custom images not showing as swatches?

If the custom image is not displayed, it may mean a step was missed in the instructions above. Or you may have a 3rd party app installed that affects the product page. Disable any such apps to confirm and if you identify the offending app, you can contact the app's support team for assistance.

Where can I find a list of hex codes?

We've made a list of hex codes for you to quickly copy and paste into the Swatch colors setting. Open the file in a text-based application such as Google Docs to get started.

Please feel free to customize the codes as you'd like. Adding new codes won't harm your store. It will expedite the setup of your hex codes.

Alternatively, there are various websites that provide 'color hex code generators'. If you search for that term on the web, you should find many tools to help.

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