Anchor to DMC Conversion Chart

Anchor (Coats, the British brand) and DMC (the French one) are the two dominant six-strand cotton floss lines, and they number their colors independently — Anchor 46 and DMC 666 are both “bright red” but share no numbering logic. Conversion charts map one system onto the other by visual match, and most Anchor colors have one or two close DMC equivalents rather than an exact twin. Where this chart lists two DMC numbers for one Anchor color, one is typically a shade lighter or darker — hold both against the Anchor thread and pick.

The chart works both ways: search an Anchor number when a European pattern (Anchor is common in UK and German publications) meets your DMC-stocked shop, or search a DMC number when the reverse happens. Variegated and specialty numbers — Anchor’s 4-digit ranges — often have no equivalent and are marked as such in the source data; substituting a solid for a variegated changes the design, so buy the original when you can.

Three situations, in order of frequency: a pattern written for the brand you do not stock; a color discontinued in your region; and blending — substituting one brand’s thread inside a project already stitched in the other. That last one is where the “close equivalent” warning bites: two reds that match under shop lighting can read differently under daylight. For a substitution inside a finished piece, stitch a small test area and view it in the light the piece will live in.