[tarikjn]

RAL is a lot, lot cheaper than Munsell or Pantone (now both owned by X-Rite) and is particularly well suited for Industrial Design.

  - you can get yourself a fan of RAL Classic colors for $16, which are solid colors that include enough grays, whites and colors to get started and cover all basic needs, and that most industrial/finishing shops already have
  - most shops now also accept Pantone PMS C (coated), which cost $260, but Pantone comes from printing and so has no whites, you need to add FHI TPG+TCX (another $260) to get whites. Pantone recommends replacing the fans every 12-18 months before their die age
  - Munsell is a "full" color space so as such it is inherently more expensive (even more so that it is now owned by X-Rite), with a rich history in USDA standards, food QA, science and artists. NCS and RAL "Design" also feature "full" color space, most certainly a lot cheaper than Munsell

Cost is important because everybody in your supply chain need to have the color system on hand: designers, marketing, suppliers, QA.

Curated colors:

  - RAL Classic (216) $16, RAL Effect (490) $70
  - Pantone PMS (2,390), Pantone FHI (2,625) each $260
  - RAL P1 Classic plastics (100 colors + textures): $2,100 
  - RAL P2 Effect plastics (200 colors + textures): $2,700
  - Pantone plastics (1,755): $9,078

Color spaces:

  - Munsell (1,600): $1,525 - $1,625 (Munsell book of colors matte - glossy), cheaper subselections of colors based around neutral, soil, plant & rock colors
  - NCS (2,050): $210, used a lot in architecture/interior design, from Sweden
  - RAL Design (1,825): $160, all its colors are additional to/not in Classic/Design

If you need a few colors, a curated system is more adapted and cheaper, but a curated system with thousands of colors (Pantone) is more expensive and less versatile than a system based on a color space.

As you can see the whole RAL catalog/system of color is designed for cost and so that you can start small and expand, and have enough variety at each level + it has nice features that shows its Industrial orientation such as all colors being solid and textured plastics.

RAL catalog has each system building on the other, Munsell is a color space with subsets picked from it for specific uses, NCS is always the full color space, Pantone is a gigantic, somewhat incoherent curated system that started with printing and expanded into fashion & cosmetics.

Munsell is based around different sectors of industry & science, so color subsets availability, design and price dictate that it is uneconomical for other sectors or more general design outside gov standards. E.g. Munsell even has a frozen french fry color standard book! [1]

There are many more color systems and color spaces, but those are the main ones for which there is wide availability of physical color books around the World.

[1] https://www.pantone.com/products/munsell/munsell-usda-frozen...