We recently had a Bramble Berry customer that had a bit of trouble with the Red Velvet LabColor not turning out to be the color she wanted. We made her proprietary recipe and came out with a really bright, snappy color. I’m wondering if it’s a usage rate issue? There’s always a possibility of operator error on our part with a mislabeled bottle too.
The soap on the right used 6 drops of undiluted Red Velvet LabColor in 2 pounds of soap. It also went through a full gel phase which helps the brightness of the color really stick out.
Here’s an example of the Wineberry Mist LabColor with a high and a low usage rate. Notice the difference in shade and hue just by varying the usage rate a bit. The fragrance that we used accelerated trace a lot so it was tricky to smoosh this one fully down in the mold. The darker color used 276 grams of diluted Wineberry Mist in 6.5 lbs of soap.
![lab2[1]](https://www.soapqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lab21-120x120.jpg)
Labcolors are these super concentrated FD & C based colors. They require a little bit of testing with your recipe to make sure that you get the hue and shade that you want. Since they’re not as stable as Oxides, sometimes, you’ll think you got the perfect color, only to be shocked the next day when it’s darker or lighter. That said, they’re really cost effective to use and the range of colors is endless so I prefer them in CP when I need a really WOW soap color or design.
Ooh, how lovely! It’s a really gorgeous, rich color too!
Wow, only 6 drops! fantastic!
Oohhh…I LOVE the wine color! I wish there were colors like that that wouldn’t bleed!
I’m really interested in learning more about the lab colors. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on that kind of thing now, but in the future it seems like it would be the easiest way to get the colors I want.