Cosmetic Pigments FAQ

By the shade you need and by the regulatory route you can accept, not by preference.

Inorganic pigments (iron oxides, ultramarine, chromium oxide) are mineral, opaque, light-stable and cheap per unit of colour. They cover the earth tones and the whites, and they are the default in foundation and blush. Organic lakes (D&C and FD&C type) give the bright reds, yellows and blues that inorganics cannot reach, but they are dyes laid on a substrate, so they are less opaque, less light-stable, and their permitted use varies more between markets.

Our range splits exactly along that line: iron oxides and ultramarine under Inorganic, the lake series under Organic. If a shade can be hit with an inorganic, hit it with an inorganic.

The CI number is the Colour Index identifier for the colorant itself, independent of who makes it or what it is called commercially. Regulators list colorants by CI number.

That means your registration and your customer's questionnaire are about CI 77492, not about Kingpigment 340Y. Two things follow. First, when you switch supplier or grade, the CI number is what has to stay constant. Second, when you check a market's permitted list, you check it by CI number — and the same CI number can be permitted in one product category and restricted in another in the same market.

Every grade in our tables carries its CI number for that reason. If a technical document you receive does not, ask for it.

Below roughly pH 5 it starts to decompose, releasing hydrogen sulphide; the change is visible as a loss of blue and a smell.

That matters in three places: an AHA or BHA product, a low-pH gel, and any emulsion where the water phase drifts acidic over shelf life. In a normal cream at pH 5.5–7 there is no issue in practice, which is why ultramarine is so widely used.

If your formula is acidic, either buffer it or move to a blue that is not ultramarine — an organic lake, or a blend of iron blue where the market permits it.

It changes packing, coverage and how the pigment disperses — and in a pressed product, it changes the press behaviour too.

340Y yellow and 116R red are needle-shaped, which gives good colour strength and a slightly directional light response; 920B black is spherical, which packs densely and gives a smoother, more uniform black; 410G chromium oxide green is rhombus, which presses well and is the most dimensionally stable of the three.

For most formulas the shape is a secondary consideration behind the CI number and the colour strength. It becomes primary when you are fighting either dispersion (spherical is easiest) or press hardness (rhombus packs most densely).

It is permitted in most markets but with different conditions, and in some customer specifications it is excluded outright regardless of law.

Carmine (CI 75470) is a natural colorant derived from cochineal, so it carries two separate issues: a regulatory one, where the permitted product categories and any labelling requirements differ by market, and a consumer one, where a meaningful share of the public wants to avoid it for dietary, religious or vegan reasons. Some brands exclude it by policy, and some markets require specific labelling.

Practically: confirm the destination market's permitted categories before you specify it, and keep a carmine-free alternative qualified if you supply anyone with a vegan or halal claim. Our lake range includes both, so the swap is a grade change rather than a reformulation.

They are the same pigment held to two different market specifications, which is a documentation difference, not a performance one.

980B FDA is released against US requirements; 970B is released against the Chinese safety and technical standard for cosmetics. Both are CI 77266 and both are the same base material. If you sell into both markets you need both grades, or a grade that has been released against both.

The reason to care is that carbon black attracts more regulatory attention than most pigments, so a questionnaire about it is common. Quote the grade that matches the destination and the paperwork follows.

Check the market's permitted list by CI number and by product category — that is the only reliable test, because the answer differs between the EU, the US and China for the same lake.

As a starting point, the Red 6 / Red 7 / Red 27 / Red 28 / Red 30 / Red 33 family and the Yellow 5 / Yellow 6 lakes are the workhorses of lip colour, and our 150R through 390Y series covers them. What you must not do is assume that a lake permitted in the EU is permitted for lips in the US, or the reverse; some are permitted for lips in one and only for external use in the other.

Send us the destination market and product category and we will tell you which of our grades carries the corresponding release.

Test them in your own base under your own conditions — a light fastness rating on a datasheet is a starting filter, not a result.

The published ratings in our water-soluble dye series (the star ratings against pH stability) are meant for exactly that: ranking candidates before you test. Actual performance depends on the base, the film thickness, the packaging and the light exposure, and a dye that scores well in a thick cream can fail in a thin lip gloss.

The practical protocol is a xenon-arc or QUV exposure on a drawdown in the finished base, with a colour measurement before and after. If you do not have the equipment, ask us for the closest application data we have for that grade.

Because lakes are dyes on a substrate, so a kilo of lake contains less actual colour than a kilo of pigment.

The substrate — usually alumina or a rosin — is part of the weight. That is why the loading has to go up when you move from an inorganic pigment to a lake for the same depth of shade, often by 20–40%. The lake also scatters less, so it looks more transparent, which reads as weaker in a thin film.

If you need both brightness and opacity in the same shade, the usual answer is a lake for the hue plus a small amount of TiO2 for the body.

MOQ is 1 kg for a stock grade and 25 kg for a production quantity; some specialty lakes have a 5 kg minimum because they are made to order. Lead time is 7–15 working days, longer for a non-stock lake.

Samples ship at 100 g to 1 kg with COA and TDS. For a lake you have not used before, take a sample and run a stability trial in your own base before committing to a production quantity — that is cheaper than discovering a pH interaction after the batch is made.