Key Points
- Before you choose your tablet coating color, consider the shape and size of your product.
- There are a variety of benefits of color coding tablets, including brand identification and flavor perception.
- When thinking about the color coding of tablets, your choice is strongly influenced by your product’s ingredients and regulatory requirements.
- How a patient feels about taking their medication is highly influenced by the color used in the tablet.
- Coloring agents used in pharmaceuticals are a color additive, dye, or pigment added to the drug.
Explaining Different Tablet Sizes and Shapes
Before you choose your tablet coating color, consider the shape and size of your product. If tablets are the right shape and size, they provide a wide range of benefits over other dosage forms:
- Easy storage
- Portability
- Easy administration
- Dosage accuracy
Review the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance report to ensure that your tablet regulatory requirements meet and align with patient safety.
Tablet Sizes
About 16 million people in the U.S. have some difficulty swallowing tablets, a condition known as dysphagia, according to the report. Patients with the condition find it challenging to swallow large tablets and capsules, leading to skipped doses or discontinued treatment.
Tablet Shapes
Some tablet shapes are easier to swallow than others. For example, flat tablets provide better esophagus tolerance compared to capsules. Oval tablets may also be easier to swallow, providing a quicker esophageal transit time than round tablets.
The Benefits of Color Coding Tablets
There are a variety of benefits of color coding tablets:
Brand Identification
Color-coded tablets improve brand identification for tablet manufacturers striving to make their medications stand out in a highly competitive market. If you choose the right color for your product, you can increase the chance of manufacturing a product that’s well-known by patients and doctors.
Flavor Perception
Your tablet coating color should match the flavor that the patient expects when they consume the medication. Ensuring that the colors used in your tablets match with the expected taste increases patient consumption.
Quality Perception
When you choose a quality tablet coating color, you can increase the patient perception of your product and add value to its appeal.
The Basics of Tablet Coating Color
Choosing a tablet coating color is about aesthetic appeal. Studies show that patients prefer certain tablet coating colors unconsciously.
When thinking about the color coding of tablets, your choice is strongly influenced by your product’s ingredients and regulatory requirements, depending on where you’re manufacturing the drug. Certain countries have pigment restrictions so when choosing your tablet coating color, consider the region. For example, pharmaceutical companies in Japan have limited tablet coating color options due to dye regulations, so manufacturers are restricted from using bright-colored aluminum pigments. However, iron oxide-based colors are accepted globally and come in many shades and come from more reserved color palettes like yellows, browns, greys, and beiges.
Different Types of Colors Used in Tablets
How a patient feels about taking their medication is highly influenced by the color used in the tablet. Studies show that different colors and shades align with a variety of emotions. For example, white, pink, and yellow tablets typically spark a feeling of safety, while red colors used in tablets can be viewed as powerful or dangerous depending on the region. Some tablet manufacturers choose tablet coating colors based on gender, age, and time of day the medication should be consumed. Some patients align dark-colored tablets with nighttime and lighter-colored tablets with daytime. One example of choosing tablet coating color based on day vs. night consumption is cold remedies—lighter coloring agents are used for daytime, and darker coloring agents are used for nighttime.
Explaining Coloring Agents Used in Pharmaceuticals
Coloring agents used in pharmaceuticals are a color additive, dye, or pigment added to the drug. The FDA regulates coloring agents in tablets and capsules to ensure they’re safe to consume and contain only approved ingredients.
Coloring Agents Used in Pharmaceuticals to Increase Patient Consumption
Most medications have an unpleasant taste, so tablet manufacturers use coloring agents and sugar-based film coating in pharmaceuticals to mask undesirable tastes on patient palettes. By using pleasant film coating and attractive tablet coating colors, tablet manufacturers can increase patient consumption.
Coloring agents play an important role in visual appeal in pharmaceuticals. The human brain associates certain flavors with specific color additives, so it’s crucial that your tablets are formulated accordingly to increase patient consumption. Coloring agents used in pharmaceuticals can be natural or synthetic. To achieve a more specific color match, you can select synthetic dyes or mineral pigments. However, the FDA has strict limitations on using these types of color additives to ensure patient safety.
How To Match Tablet Coating Color and Flavor
It’s common for pharmaceutical companies to use spectrophotometers to match tablet coating color and flavor to increase patient consumption. This popular technology ensures a subjective color assessment to provide crucial information, allowing you to develop a unique color-flavor agreement for your tablets. Creating a perfect color-flavor agreement for your product has its own set of obstacles, but using the most advanced technology increases the chances of a successful match.
Providing Tablet Coating Color Solutions
At Thomas Processing, we know the importance of tablet coating color solutions, including how to select the best film and sugar coatings for your product. Our team of experts provides modern tablet coating systems for customers in the pharmaceutical industry worldwide. As industry leaders, Thomas professionals design automatic and continuous tablet coating machines based on modern coating technology. Our tablet film coating machines offer a long lifecycle, consistent performance across multiple batches, and a uniform level of tablet coating using the latest technology. Contact us today to learn more about how to choose the right tablet coating color for your pharmaceuticals.
