Configurable product with multiple color variations

Question

I have one product that comes in 12 colors and 4 sizes of each color. The problem is it comes in navy blue and royal blue. The color for each of these is listed as blue, to make our layered navigation easier for the customer to use. In doing so magento won't let me attach both colors to the configurable. If I use a third option for color swatch when creating a configurable there are 3 dropdowns on the buy page where there should be 2. If I use color swatch/size to create, then the layered navigation doesn't work.

Is there another solution, maybe to make the configurables not require a unique value for color?

Answer 1

In this case the easiest way would be to create 2 color attributes. Let's say color_navigate and color_dropdown.

color_navigate would be used in the layered navigation

• type: Dropdown
• scope: Global
• Use To Create Configurable Product: No
• Use In Layered Navigation: Filterable (with results)
• Visible on Product View Page on Front-end: No
• Options: Blue, Red, Green (etc)

color_dropdown would be used for selecting a product to buy

• type: Dropdown
• scope: Global
• Use To Create Configurable Product: Yes
• Use In Layered Navigation: No
• Visible on Product View Page on Front-end: No
• Options: Royal blue, Baby blue, Dark red, Crimson Red, Army green (etc)

The only downside is that the admin needs to select a color option twice but on the frontend the result is exactly what you want