{"id":16112,"date":"2017-08-17T17:01:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T09:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/?p=16112"},"modified":"2019-09-20T20:34:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T12:34:17","slug":"pcb-solder-mask-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/17\/pcb-solder-mask-colors\/","title":{"rendered":"PCB Solder Mask Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"Colors are an indispensable part of our lives – each represents a different meaning. This is no different when it comes to Printed Circuit Boards. The vibrant rainbow of colors brings welcomed variety and individuality into the world of electronics. Where would the maker community be were it not for the wide availability of colors?\n\nWhat are the effects of the different colors?<\/strong>\n\nThe color of a PCB is actually the color of the solder mask or solder oil, a lacquer impregnated with pigments that protects the bare copper traces. Actually, the color of the solder mask largely has no effect on the performance of the boards after assembly. There are a few considerations<\/a> that may impact the design or production of the boards, though.\n\nThe greatest impact is the effect on the visibility of the features of the circuit board \u2013 for example, green solder mask has good contrast between the areas under the solder mask oil with and without copper. You can easily see the traces with the naked eye, whereas for black solder mask – you have no idea. That does little to impair the popularity of black solder mask however.\n\nWhy are most PCBs Green? <\/strong>\n\nGood question, we believe this deserves it’s own article<\/a>.\n\nAnd now we have tried to resolve the most burning question of all:\n\nWhich is the most popular solder mask color?<\/strong>\n\nSeeed Fusion PCB<\/a> fabrication service offers 6 different PCB colors for its customers. Since November 2016, we slashed the additional costs for different colors for all standard FR-4 PCBs, so you can pick any color your like for free. So, to find out which color is our customers\u2019 no.1 choice, we have analyzed the data for all orders placed since then. In addition, we recently ran a poll<\/a> asking you which color is your favorite. Let\u2019s see if the people\u2019s favorite matches actual order data. We have also compared the popularity of the colors for our top 7 countries: USA, Japan, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada and France. Here are the results:\n\n\n\"pcb\n<\/strong>\n\nGreen wins!?<\/strong>\n\nFrom actual order data it seems Green is the most popular color, but in the favorites poll, green ranks 3rd<\/sup> \u2013 what\u2019s going on here? Well, it makes sense. Green solder mask performs better<\/u> when it comes to soldering fine pitch components compared to other colors. Another key reason is possibly because Green is the default color. Some people may not care about the color of their PCBs so long as it works, particularly, say for industrial use or prototyping. Even in a completed electronic device how often do you even see the circuit board?\n\nOther interesting things we have found \u2013 Japan orders have the highest percentage of Green boards, while Germany ordered the least. It seems Germany prefers the non-standard colors much more than any other country.\n\nSo what if we exclude Green from the equation? Then this is what we get:\n\n\u00a0\"pcb\n<\/strong>\n\nBlack is back \u2013 or was it always number 1?<\/strong>\n\nHere we can see that the sales match the popularity polls with Black being the clear winner, followed by Blue, Red, White then Yellow. This ranking is repeated on national levels except in Japan and Australia, where blue narrowly nabs first place.\n\n\"pcb\n\nOther interesting things we noticed:\n