You might think that this is so self-evident that it requires little discussion. However the name that the paint manufacturer gives to their product is likely to be the most misleading piece of information on the label! I call it the ‘marketing’ name because that’s really all it is: a name chosen by a paint company which does not tell you which pigment(s) the colour is made from.

To understand this we need to be aware of the difference between the terms ‘paint’ and ‘pigment’. The pigment is what gives the paint its colour and derives from a ground up organic substance, or a synthetic substance that is chemically produced. The paint is the combination of that pigment and a binder (such as oil, acrylic polymer or gum arabic) which holds the pigment together and dries into a film when you’ve applied the paint to your paper or canvas. There may also be other additives included in the paint mixture such as drying agents or fillers to bulk the paint out. These additives do not have to be declared on the paint tube.



There IS actually a standardized scheme for describing different pigments. It’s known as the Colour Index, which we will discuss further below. But the name of the pigments isn’t usually contained within the marketing name of the colour and the only way to identify those pigments is to look for a little code on the back of the tube which relates to this colour index. With our oil paint tube above, the marketing name that Winsor & Newton have chosen is ‘Pthalo Turquoise’. This is a bit more helpful than many marketing names in that it does at least tip us off that the paint has been produced with pigments from the pthalocyanine family of synthetic organic pigments.

However this oil paint has in fact been made from mixing Phthalocyanine Green and Phthalocyanine Blue pigments rather than from a single, turquoise coloured pigment. In contrast W&N’s ‘Pthalo Turquoise’ shade from their ‘professional’ watercolour range IS made from a single pthalocyanine pigment that has a purple colour. Therefore the manufacturer is using the same marketing name for both colours but the pigments that they contain are different. These two shades won’t be identical, and only opening the lid of a tube will tell you exactly which shade of paint you are getting. Does this matter? Well, different pigments give very varied properties to your paint that can affect your work in a number of ways as we’ll see further on. When the marketing name of the paint doesn’t help you to identify those pigments you cannot anticipate how the paint will behave when you apply it and in the long term.



How do companies choose their colour names? In an ideal world the name on the tube would be the same as the pigments it contains, but these pigments may have long chemical names that aren’t particularly catchy and have no romance to them. A manufacturer needs a single name whereas many paints – like our Pthalo Turquoise – are what are known as ‘convenience’ mixtures made from a number of pigments blended together to achieve a certain colour.



When a paint has a name that doesn’t trip off the tongue or doesn’t sound appealing from a marketing point of view, a manufacturer will come up with a more catchy one. Pthalocyanine Green pigment for example is sometimes sold as the simpler ‘Phtalo Green’ but is also variously marketed as ‘Sap Green’, ‘Rembrandt Green’, Winsor Green’ or ‘Zulu Green’ to name but a few examples. Manufacturers like to come up with generically descriptive names like ‘Brilliant Orange’ or romantic sounding but technically meaningless names such as ‘Old Delft Blue’. The prize for the most evocative names should surely go to Daniel Smith paints who are actually an excellent and important paint company known for developing new pigments particularly from mineral sources. They offer colours such as ‘Imperial Purple’, ‘Lunar Blue’, ‘Aussie Red Gold’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty Turquoise’.

Paint companies continue to market paints with the names of pigments which are no longer used due to toxicity, lightfastness problems, environmental concerns or a simple lack of availability. For example Vandyke Brown and Naples Yellow were originally made from single pigments which are now obsolete. Most manufacturers still produce what they call a ‘Vandyke brown’ colour by substituting one or more different pigments. Naples yellow which was originally made from a pigment called ‘antimony’, but is now made with chromium titanate mixed with titanium white.

When paint companies produce a colour that is an approximation of a traditional colour in this way, they are supposed to add the word ‘hue’ to the colour name. In fact with very old ‘colours’ such as Ultramarine, Vandkye brown or Naples yellow where the original pigment fell out of use a long time ago, they rarely do. However when manufacturers produce a cheaper alternative to a single pigment colour that is still available, they usually obey this best practice guideline.

For example, as an alternative to the very expensive ‘Cadmium Red’ produced from true cadmium sulfoselenide you will see ‘Cadmium Red Hue’ which contains no true cadmium and is blended from a number of cheaper pigments. The resulting paint costs a fraction of the true cadmium paint. Although hue colours may be produced due to concerns over things like the toxicity of heavy metals, most commonly they are simply a cost-saver and you’ll find very many of them in a cheap ‘student’ grade paint range and far fewer in a professional grade range. They are usually considered inferior to the original single colour pigment as they are likely to be less intense, possibly less lightfast and to sometimes go ‘muddy’ when mixed with other colours. They may also not be a very close match to the colour they are imitating.