AbstractThe visibility and spatial‐frequency components of a design are discussed as visual features of yarn‐dyed fabric design. The aim is to introduce objective visual features that can be used for classification in a database of yarn‐dyed fabric designs. First, the visually effective distances are measured for yarn‐dyed fabric design elements that have also been subjectively evaluated. The visually effective distance expresses the perceived differences between designs in terms of visibility at different viewing distances. Next, low‐pass filtered images of the yarn‐dyed fabric designs are correlated with the original images in terms of the measurement of the yarn‐dyed fabric's identification distance. The spatial frequency components are a visual feature of yarn‐dyed fabric design related to visibility and expressed by the visually effective distance. In addition, the cross‐correlations between the original image and low‐pass filtered images at successively greater low‐pass spatial frequency ranges are investigated. Then the characteristics of the reconstructed images are compared for different designs. The results confirm the effectiveness of using spatial‐frequency components as visual features. This method uses the visually effective distance to capture the subjective visual features of a yarn‐dyed fabric design. By virtue of its correspondence with objective spatial frequency components, this method provides feature evaluation capabilities and objectivity not