We don´t want crying kids and angry parents for what we could have done better.
We use as less tape as possible for clear walls and clear lines.
Also for the crowed it is more clear and non climbers will understand the difference.

More than 40% of the men have a red/green debility.
-We never set red and green in one line.
-We never set black, grey in one line.
-We never set white, grey in one line.
-We never set violet, blue in one line
….
Best options:
-neon Yellow/neon blue
-Neon Orange/Neon Green
-Neon Pink/Black
-White/Violet
So you can set 8 routes in the same line without a problem???

We think that 3 routes in one line are great.
We want happy climbers and the most climbed grade in big gyms is 5-6a.

We try to make the routes and the rules as clear as possible to bring more fun and less discussions.
In Europe it´s not possible to set routes with tapes.
I can´t believe how it works well.

Another point is the waste. You waste miles of tape every year.

I know gyms here they never use two different hold companies for one route.
That means that they buy every time the full range from the companies.
This gym is one of the biggest in Europe with more than 3000m².
I don´t like that system very much but for the routes in the lower grades for the beginners who come for the first time or for the children birthday climbing it´s brilliant.
The gym looks really clear and clean. This makes it very attractive to fitness sportsmen.
Bankers, Managers and other guys come climbing and spend their money at the climbing gym now.
The gym saves a lot of time with explaining and stuff.

All my ideas are experiences from comercial climbing gyms

Then you’re clearly not color blind. What, to you, are completely obvious colors are not to a colorblind person. However, for most colorblind people, large patches of completely uniform colors are still distinguishable, sometimes using tricks like contrast or relative brightness without using the actual color of the object. With a climbing hold, however, the surface isn’t uniform, nor is the color. This is especially bad with swirled holds, but is also a problem with holds gunked up with chalk and shoe rubber. Suddenly, those techniques of using contrast or brightness break down when you don’t have the stark, in-your-face, easily identifiable tape strips.

As someone who IS colorblind, I deal daily with the irritations brought on by normally-sighted people who design signs and labels with no regard for the ten percent of the overall population that has trouble differentiating colors. You have no understanding of what it’s like, and thus you set from a, not to put it rudely, but an ignorant point of view.

Leif wrote: “Distinct marks (as practiced in my gym) can be made on tape for color blind customers without permanently marking the holds.”

THANK YOU! I wish more gyms were as forward-thinking as yours! Even something as simple as having a Purple route and a Blue route with tape X’s can make the indistinguishable manageable for a colorblind person.

Advantages are: you may use the same hold for more than one route, allowing greater density and flexibility of routes in a given surface area. Hold choice is not compromised, allowing more hold options even with a smaller hold inventory (a boon to gym owners). Distinct marks (as practiced in my gym) can be made on tape for color blind customers without permanently marking the holds.

Disadvantages are (few): the noisy and confusing coloring often seen with taped walls can be eliminated with good taping and color choice, keeping routes distinguishable from each other. Also, reasonably frequent route rotation and using simple taping technique eliminates the visually displeasing pealing/lost tape problem.

I agree that tape can be aesthetically ugly, but ONLY when done badly. A general rule for BOTH tape and non-tape gyms should simply be to not overcrowd a given wall space, and use good judgment when choosing route color.

I guess it depends on how you judge the quality of a route. For me, the route is more than just the perfect movement. There is definitely an aesthetic aspect to it.

Finally, it must be said that the hold-colour only system might be an impossibility for smaller gyms if they haven’t got the budget or the space for storing the holds.

Audrey (London)

I guess Louie amended answer seems perfect to me. It all just depends on the specific situation at a specific time.

a good way to cut down the clutter is to keep the tape simple. no “red with X’s”, next to “red with T’s”. one color or one thick piece of tape with one thin stripe down the middle.

and if taped properly the tape will last and be visible while doing the moves on the route.

just my two pence

matt

Luckily I had a budget that allowed me to order holds to suit this method of setting. We set with eight different colors of holds and when I place my hold orders I order eight sets of everything (one in each color). I know that won’t work for everyone, because it increases the volume of the hold order and usually adds a 10% increase for custom colors.

We do have members that are color-blind and what we have done is to mark certain hold colors with a Sharpie, i.e. purple holds have an “x” through the bolt hole, white holds have a “-” through the bolt hole and red holds have a “-” off to one side of the hole. This way it helps to distinguish purple/blue, red/green and white/grey.

If it was my own gym or a choice I had been given, I would probably use tape – mostly for financial and storage reasons. But it does look really nice and clean without tape and the gym doesn’t add tape waste into the system.

Feeling your pain,

- Louie

Sadly, something tells me tape just isn’t going to fix them.

with a whimper,

tommy wilson

In the perfect setters world (unlimited hold options in all colors, massive wall options at all angles, large areas of separation between climbs, etc.) monochromatic (setting by color of hold – no tape needed) setting would be my preference. In the real world that many of us set in, this may not always be feasible and I acknowledge the use of tape as being a somewhat necessary evil.

The concerns of a home wall and a commercial facility are also different. In a commercial setting, the climbs (and their markings) need to be as visually appealing as possible. The bottom line in this is that monochromatic setting is much nicer to look at than a sea of multi-colored holds and tape. On a home wall or a more compact bouldering facility, the wall’s users will likely be more willing to put the effort into deciphering a colored tape system without having it impact their enjoyment of the climbing.

I’m really not against tape if it is the best option for a given situation. I would just rather see monochromatic setting if the situation allows for it and the climbing does not suffer for it.

I mean, how would l link the match on the watermelon striped So-Ill sloper with the thrutch to the pink Voodoo dish if I had to have a watermelon colored route? I wouldn’t.

Tape is a necessary evil.

Roughly 7% of men are red-green colorblind. Around 20% of men have some degree of difficulty identifying colors. With colored tape, the color is bright, with huge amounts of contrast, and even then I still have trouble distinguishing routes. A route with purple tape on the same wall as one with blue tape is very likely to give me trouble, for example. But if you use the color of the hold, everything turns into a brownish chalky mush, and it’s essentially impossible for me to distinguish routes. It’s bad enough that I actively avoid certain gyms because I know they use hold color to identify routes.

Color blindness is classified as a disability, and with good reason. Please show a little bit of understanding and keep it in mind when you set your routes.