Swatches vs Variants
Two editors, one record. Which one you want, and why they are separate.
Varn has two editors and new merchants sometimes open the wrong one. The split is simple:
Swatches
Answers "what does the chip for Blue look like?"
A solid color, a two tone chip, a gradient, or an uploaded photo.
Free on unlimited products.
Variants
Answers "which of my product photos belong to Blue, and in what order?"
Picks from the product's existing media and sets the sequence, including which one is the cover.
Free for your first 5 products; paid plans raise the limit.
They write to the same record#
Both editors save into the same per-product metafield. A value can carry a chip and a photo map at once, and that is the normal, good configuration:
- the chip is what the shopper taps
- the photo map is what the gallery shows once they do
Because both write the same record, both apply the same plan checks server side. You cannot use one editor to sneak past a limit in the other.
Which one do I want?#
| You want to... | Editor |
|---|---|
| Make "Sand" render as a beige circle | Swatches |
| Make "Leopard" render as a photo of the print | Swatches |
| Show only the 3 photos of the red version when red is picked | Variants |
| Change which photo is the cover for a color | Variants |
| Add a new photo to the product from inside Varn | Variants |
| Let AI setup guess colors from value names | Swatches |
| Let AI setup assign existing photos to colors | Variants |
Why two editors and not one screen#
Two reasons, both learned the hard way.
They are different jobs at different moments. Setting up chips is a fast pass over the whole catalogue. Mapping photos is careful, per-product work you do for your hero products. Putting them on one screen made the fast job slow.
Saving scope. Each editor saves only what it owns. A per-product photo save can never clobber a chip you set five minutes ago, and neither can overwrite your global style. Keeping the write scopes separate is what prevents that class of data loss.
The shared safety rule#
Both editors apply the same rule when saving: only deliberate choices are written.
Both seed sensible defaults so the screen is useful the moment you open it, for example showing a value's variant photo as its chip. But an untouched default is dropped at save time. Only the values you actually changed end up in your storefront data.
That is why a value you never touched keeps using your theme's own native swatch instead of quietly inheriting something you did not pick.