Textile Design Glossary

A repeat structure where every tile is identical and aligned in a perfect grid. The simplest seamless pattern type: left edge meets right edge, top meets bottom, with no offset between adjacent tiles.

A repeat structure where alternating columns are offset vertically by exactly 50% of the tile height. Produces a diagonal flow that the eye reads as more organic than a block repeat.

A repeat structure where alternating rows are offset horizontally by exactly 50% of the tile width. Creates the visual rhythm of brick walls and is common in architectural and tile-inspired prints.

A repeat structure where the tile is flipped horizontally and vertically and butted against the original to form a 2W × 2H quad-mirror unit. Mathematically guaranteed seamless without AI inpainting.

The repeat unit in textile design: the smallest tile that, when repeated, produces the full pattern. Synonymous with 'tile' in seamless-pattern terminology.

A rectangular image whose left edge continues into its right edge and whose top edge continues into its bottom edge, allowing it to repeat across a surface without visible seams.

A repeat structure where motifs are arranged on a diamond-shaped grid with curved S-shaped boundaries. Common in damask, brocade, and ornamental textile traditions.

A repeat structure where motifs are placed on a diamond grid. Each motif sits at the intersection of 45-degree diagonal lines, producing a lattice rhythm.

A repeat structure where motifs appear randomly distributed but actually tile seamlessly. The randomness is engineered: motifs are placed inside the tile boundary so adjacent tiles do not visually align.

A pattern with a clear top-to-bottom orientation. Cannot be rotated 180 degrees without becoming visually upside-down. Affects garment layout and fabric cutting.

An individual decorative element within a textile pattern. The smallest meaningful design unit: a flower, geometric shape, animal, or abstract form that repeats throughout the design.

The arrangement of motifs within a textile rapport. Determines density, rhythm, and orientation. Independent from the repeat type, which governs how the rapport tiles.

The size of motifs relative to the rapport and to the end use. Children's wear uses 2-4 cm motifs; adult apparel uses 4-10 cm; home textiles use 8-25 cm; statement upholstery uses 25-50 cm.

A color difference formula that calculates the perceptual distance between two colors in CIE-LAB color space. The textile industry standard for evaluating whether a color match is acceptable for production.

A specific color variation of a single textile design. The same pattern, motif scale, and layout, rendered in different color palettes for different markets or seasons.

The numerical output of a color difference formula, expressing the perceptual distance between two colors. Lower is closer; values under 2.0 are considered commercial-grade matches.

TCX stands for Textile Cotton eXtended: Pantone's textile colour library dyed on cotton fabric, and the usual reference when specifying colour to a dye house or mill.

TPG stands for Textile Paper Green: Pantone's textile colour library printed on paper, which replaced the older TPX. Useful for design boards, not for approving dyed colour.

TPX stands for Textile Paper eXtended: the older paper edition of Pantone's textile colours. It has been replaced by TPG, so a TPX reference in an old brand book should be checked in Pantone Connect, and fabric colour specified in TCX, before it goes to a mill.

When two colours match under one light but not under another. A fabric that matches the standard in daylight can look different under store or home lighting.

A small fabric sample dyed by the mill to match a colour standard, sent to the buyer for approval before bulk dyeing.

A cabinet with standardised light sources used to compare fabric colours under daylight, store and home lighting in a controlled way.

A color space designed to match human visual perception, where Euclidean distance approximates perceived color difference. The standard workspace for professional color matching in textiles.

A single, pre-mixed ink color used in screen printing. Each spot color in a design requires its own screen and its own ink pass. Contrast with process color (CMYK overprint).

The process of identifying the closest standardized color reference (a colour code with Lab values) to an arbitrary color in a design. Required for production handoff with predictable color reproduction.

A four-channel printing system (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key/Black) that simulates the full color gamut by overprinting transparent inks. Used in digital printing and offset; less accurate than spot color.

The complete range of colors a device or color space can reproduce. sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhoto RGB, CMYK, and Pantone all have different gamuts. Textile work hits gamut limits regularly.

The named color of a sample: red, blue, green, etc. The H in HSL/HSV color models. Independent of saturation (purity) and lightness.

The purity or intensity of a color. High saturation = vivid, pure hue. Low saturation = muted, washed-out, closer to gray. Independent of hue and lightness.

The perceived brightness of a color, independent of hue and saturation. The L in CIE-LAB and HSL color models. Critical for accessibility and for color matching across substrates.

The warm-cool axis of a color or a light source, measured in Kelvin (K). Lower temperatures (2700K) are warm/orange; higher (6500K) are cool/blue. Affects color matching across viewing conditions.

The finished edge of a roll of fabric, perpendicular to the direction of weaving or printing. Used as a registration reference and quality-check zone in textile printing.

A small physical print of a textile design produced before committing to a full production run. Used to verify color, registration, scale, and seamlessness on the actual fabric.

A pattern of dots used to reproduce continuous-tone gradients in a printing process that can only deposit ink in binary (on/off) fashion. Essential for screen printing.

Lines per inch: the resolution measure for halftone screens. Determines how many dot rows are placed per inch in the screen pattern. Higher LPI = finer detail.

The rotation angle of a halftone dot grid. In multi-color printing, each color uses a different angle to prevent moiré interference patterns.

A class of generative AI models that produce images by iteratively denoising random Gaussian noise into coherent imagery. The dominant architecture for AI image generation in 2026, including textile pattern AI.

An AI technique that fills in or modifies a masked region of an image while preserving the unmasked area. The standard method for AI-healing seamless tile boundaries.

Classifier-free guidance scale: a parameter controlling how strictly a diffusion model follows the text prompt. Higher values produce more literal interpretations; lower values allow more creative variation.

An integer that initializes the random number generator a diffusion model uses to start generation. The same seed + same prompt + same model produces the same output exactly.

An AI technique that extends an image beyond its original borders by generating new content that visually continues the existing image. The complement of inpainting.

A class of diffusion-model techniques that constrain the generation process to produce seamlessly tileable output natively, without a separate seam-healing pass.

A grayscale image that defines which pixels of a primary image should be edited (white) vs. preserved (black) during inpainting or compositing operations.

An AI technique that separates a subject from its background, producing an alpha-channel cutout. Used in product photography, motif extraction, and design compositing.

A diffusion model mode that takes an input image and a prompt, producing an output that combines the input's structure with the prompt's style. The opposite of text-to-image.

A diffusion-model technique that constrains sampling to produce seamlessly tileable output natively, with no seam healing afterwards. The architectural answer to 'AI-generate seamless patterns directly'.

Dots per inch: the resolution at which a digital design will be printed. Directly determines print quality and file size. Textile printing uses 72-600 DPI depending on print method.

Tagged Image File Format: the lossless raster format preferred for production textile printing. Supports embedded color profiles, alpha channels, multi-page documents, and 8/16/32-bit depth.

A color rendering specification file that defines how a device (monitor, printer, fabric) reproduces colors. Embedded in production files so colors render correctly across systems.

The process of converting a raster (pixel-based) image into a scalable vector (path-based) image. Used in textile design to prepare prints for screen printing, embroidery, and CAD systems.

An additional per-pixel data channel storing transparency information. Alongside RGB color channels, alpha enables compositing, background removal, and masking.

Encapsulated PostScript: a vector file format predating SVG. Standard for screen-printing handoff because RIP software has decades of EPS support.

Scalable Vector Graphics: XML-based vector format and the modern web standard. Used for textile CAD, browser-rendered logos, and embroidery handoff.

A smooth parametric curve defined by anchor points and control handles. The fundamental building block of vector graphics in SVG, EPS, and PDF.

The process of converting vector graphics (paths, shapes) into a pixel grid. Required for printing on raster output devices (digital printers, screens).