Appleton wool color chart (430 shades)

Browse all 430 Appleton wool shades — the full range used for needlepoint, crewel embroidery, and canvaswork. Search by shade number or family name, see the closest DMC equivalent for each shade, and track the shades you own. The same numbering covers both crewel (2-ply) and tapestry (4-ply) weights.

Appleton color chart by number

Use the chart below to browse the complete Appleton shade list. Every shade shows its number, family name, and closest DMC equivalent.

Appleton organizes its range into named families of related shades — Purple (101–106), Flame Red (201–209), Grass Green (251–256), all the way to Putty Groundings (981–989). Within a family the numbers step from light to dark, which makes Appleton unusually pleasant for shading work: pick a family, and the graduated shades are already chosen for you.

Crewel or tapestry?

Both weights come in the identical 430-shade palette, so this chart covers either. Crewel wool is a fine 2-ply strand — combine two or three strands to suit finer canvas or fabric. Tapestry wool is a single 4-ply strand sized for 10–14 mesh needlepoint canvas. If a design lists "Appleton 155", that is the same color in both.

Designing your own canvas? The needlepoint pattern maker charts directly against mesh sizes, and the photo converter turns any image into a needlepoint chart.

Track your Appleton collection

Use "I own this" to mark shades you have. It saves in your browser — no account needed.

Appleton ↔ DMC conversion

Tap any shade in the chart above to see its closest DMC match, computed by perceptual color distance. Treat it as a hue reference rather than a substitution: wool and stranded cotton read differently on fabric even when the color matches.

To browse the full DMC palette, see the DMC color chart.

About Appleton

Appleton Bros has been spinning and dyeing embroidery wool in England since 1835 — one of the oldest thread names still in production, and still independently run. The range is the default wool for traditional English crewel work and needlepoint, and most published canvaswork designs from UK designers call for Appleton shade numbers.

The colors shown in this chart are sampled from Appleton's official per-shade photographs. Wool texture means any single on-screen color is an approximation — for exact matching, Appleton sells a physical shade card with real wool snippets for every shade.