Tweaking your TV colour accuracy settings is one of the easiest ways to lift picture quality without paying for a professional calibration. Whether you own a cutting-edge OLED or a few-year-old QLED, the same basic adjustments apply, and none of them cost a penny.
Colour Temperature: The Starting Point
Colour temperature controls whether your picture leans warm (more yellow and red) or cool (more blue and green). Most smart TVs let you choose from presets, and the quickest route is cycling through the built-in picture modes.
Filmmaker, Cinema and Movie modes favour warmer tones, which tend to make scenes look more natural and reduce eye strain. Sports and Night modes run cooler. Standard, Vivid and Eco modes sit broadly in the middle.
If the presets are not precise enough, most brands offer manual controls. On Samsung, go to Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Colour Tone or Colour Temperature; the Custom option lets you adjust individual red, green and blue levels. On LG, the path is Settings > Picture > Advanced Settings > Colour > Colour Temperature, where a slider gives continuous control. Sony sits under Settings > Display & Sound > Picture > Colour > Colour Temperature with options including Expert 1, Expert 2, Warm, Neutral and Cool. Amazon Fire TV uses Settings > Picture or Display & Settings > Colour Temperature with Normal, Cool, Warm 1 and Warm 2 presets.
Roku TV users navigate to Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Colour Temperature. Hisense and TCL both offer Warm, Standard and Cool options through their respective Picture or Display & Sound menus.
Colour Saturation and Fine-Tuning
Once colour temperature is set, saturation is the next lever to pull. Too much and reds and yellows blow out; too little and the image looks grey and flat.
On Samsung, go to All Settings > Picture > Expert Settings and adjust the Colour slider alongside Tint and Colour Space. LG offers a Colour Depth slider plus a Fine Tune section where you can adjust red, green and blue separately. Sony adds a Live Colour toggle and Per Colour Adjustment for individual hue control under Advanced Settings. TCL has a Dynamic Colour toggle worth switching off if the image looks artificially boosted.
On Amazon Fire TV, saturation lives under Display & Sound > Display > your chosen picture mode > Colour Saturation slider. Hisense uses Settings > Picture > Picture Mode Settings > Colour Saturation. Roku TV exposes both a Colour slider and a Tint slider once you select Customise Picture within the picture settings.
Getting the Most from TV Colour Accuracy Settings: Lab-Grade Tools
For readers who want a more scientific baseline for their TV colour accuracy settings, professional hardware gives the most reliable results. ZDNET uses a Klein Instruments K10-A colorimeter in its Louisville, KY lab, priced at $6,900 on Klein Instruments’ own store, a figure that corrects the rounder $7,000 sometimes cited. The K10-A ships with a carrying case, tripod and rubber lens hood, and includes a built-in FFT Flickermeter alongside Long Range Aiming Lights.
ZDNET pairs the colorimeter with Calman display calibration software from Portrait Displays. The professional range spans two tiers: Calman Studio at $1,199 and Calman Ultimate at $2,995. That puts the full professional setup well beyond casual budgets.
Consumer Tools for Deeper Calibration
Spending thousands on lab gear is not realistic for most households, but there are more affordable routes. The Calibrite Display 123 colorimeter costs $129 and, though primarily designed for PC monitors, it can give a useful readout of colour accuracy and peak brightness on a TV when connected via laptop.
Portrait Displays also offers a consumer-facing tier of its calibration software. Calman Home comes in brand-specific versions that support AutoCal for LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Philips displays, covering both HDR and SDR manual calibration. It closes much of the gap between a rough visual tune and a full professional calibration, without the four-figure outlay.
One practical caveat: consumer colorimeters like the Calibrite Display 123 need a companion programme running on a laptop or PC. You will need to connect your TV as a temporary external monitor to run the calibration tests, which adds a step but keeps the total cost a fraction of professional-grade hardware.
For most viewers, working through colour temperature and saturation adjustments in the TV’s own menu will produce a meaningfully better picture before any extra hardware is involved. If the results still fall short of your expectations, the Calman Home and Calibrite combination is the logical next step before committing to a professional calibration session.