One realisation of the simulated CMD of NGC 6494 (log age/yr = 8.58, 682 selected main-sequence systems). Top panel: colour-coded by mass ratio. The black dots are single systems, unresolved binary systems are colour-coded by their mass ratio q. Light grey triangles with black contours overlapping with single stars are resolved components of binary systems. The errorbars are smaller than the markers. Bottom panel: result of the MCMC mixture-model fit, in the same style as Fig. 4. The simulated f_b for systems with q > 0.6 for this realisation is 13%. The mean unresolved binary fraction over the 10 CMD realisations is (14±7)%.