atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Cable Colors

I've seen topics on jack and jumper wire colors, but nothing really on cable colors. What colors do you all use for various purposes?

I *try* to use the following colors:

Blue for telephone
White for internet
Green for PoE (access points)
Yellow for PMS (VoIP)
Orange and grey for feeds
Purple for looped telephone
Red for critical circuits (elevator, FAP)
Black for video (CATV, CCTV, WebTV)

I'd like to hear what colors you all use and why, as well as anything good or bad about the color scheme I use.

Jack

Cat 3: white plenum, gray pvc
Cat 5e blue plenum or pvc
These are the most commonly stocked colors so that's what I use. If a customer requests something different, then obviously I would install what they want.

White or gray for telephone, CAT 3 naturally. Blue for data but I really don't care as long as it's not the same color as telephone. As for all of your colors I would go out of my mind (and broke) stocking them. I normally pull as many runs as I can at once meaning thousands of feet in reels get set up of one color.

-Hal

Me too. I don't care what color goes inside the wall unless it's 2 different one for Data and Voice. If it exposed wires and client really chip and doesn't want to pay for wire mold then I am using white color for both. It looks better.

Typically blue for data and white for phone. Both CAT5e. Thats normally what we carry in stock. We also have some yellow around.

White for phones and surface wired data otherwise I use blue or gray for data. Yellow for WiFi it matches what is in most schools around here.

Same as Hal here.

As recently as 25 years ago the only two colors that were readily available for Telecom cabling were beautiful beige and gorgeous grey.

I was working for GTE and I had a project to install a 2,000 line PBX in Utica, NY. Every location was to have two voice jacks and two data jacks. In those days (pre Cat 5/EIA/TIA) data for us usually meant a connection to the IBM mainframe through a 3270 cluster controller. Usually those connections were run with RG-62 coax but we were using baluns and tereminating them on RJ-11s. We also had to install a connection to the DEC PDP-11 mini computer. Those connections were also run on twisted pair but terminated on an MMJ jack. Oh, and at least half the locations were going to be mounted in Walker Doghouses, run through an underfloor wiring system.

I went to one of the bigger jack manufacturers (I don't remember which one anymore [maybe Siecor?])and for a committment of 2,500 jacks I got them to make me a combination 6P6C and an MMJ, all in a mounting like an electrical duplex receptacle - color Black. The voice cables were terminated on a similar duplex with both jacks being 6P6C - color White.

Now the voice cables were going to wind up in the PBX room and the IBM cables were going to one end of the Data Center while the DEC was going to the complete other end of the Data Center. We were using almost all local labor (electricians from the union hall in Utica) to pull the wire and while I had all the faith in the world in them, I really thought that this was an opportunity for massive screwups. (All the cabling was going to be 3-pair 24 AWG Twisted Pair Telephone Cable.) I decided the easiest way to prevent this was to get a third color cable for the job.

What a production! In the end one of the manufacturers agreed to give me any other color I wanted - as long as I bought it in lots of no less then 100,000 feet. I bought Blue.

We ran Blue for the IBM (Big Blue was their nickname), Beige for the Telephones and Grey for DEC. There were no screwups and the job went in perfectly.

Hard to believe that there was so much trouble getting a third color wire not 25 years ago.

Sam

As recently as 25 years ago the only two colors that were readily available for Telecom cabling were beautiful beige and gorgeous grey.

Oh how I miss those days. I have seen jobs now that look like a rainbow.

-Hal

I remember being in a supply house and they guy asking me what color(gray or beige ) and some of the others at the counter got a joke going about cable in "designer colors "

If only we knew :rolleyes: