What is the difference between dyes and lakes

A lake color or lake pigment is basically insoluble in nature and colors through dispersion. Lakes are produced through precipitation of soluble dyes with some metallic salt. Lake colours are also used for dispersing in glycerin, sucrose and propylene glycol.

Today, an increasing number of companies use aluminum lake colours, which is essentially a blue colored additive used for coating drugs, foods, eye makeup items and products in blue colour. Lake colours are available in powder and liquid forms and are used for coloring edible items and products such as lipsticks, lips balms, cupcakes, chocolates, frosting.

Pigments, on the other hand are essentially those substances that are used for coloring different types of materials including bath and body products. They can further be classified as organic and inorganic pigment colours. The FDA found that most of the pigments that were gathered naturally consisted of toxic or harmful materials and were extremely unsafe. Pigments are widely used for manufacturing soaps and are also inexpensive as well as available in a wide range of colours.

They are ideal for coloring melt and pour soaps, cold processed soaps and hot processed soaps. Lakes can therefore be mixed with oils, fats, and sugars. They can also be dispersed in other carriers such as propylene glycol, glycerin and sucrose water and sugar.

All Auroradyz lakes are high dye load. So why would you want to use a lake instead of a dye? Firstly, lakes aren't just used for bath bombs, they are used in the manufacture of many many more and different cosmetics, particularly those that are oil based. We automatically decided that the UK version of the Sensient website might be most appropriate for you.

If this is incorrect, you can click here to switch to the US version. We provide color for many, many applications, which is why we have many different solutions for a whole host of color needs.

Before we discuss these in-depth, let us take a broad look at dyes, lakes and pigments. Dyes are usually a water-soluble powder, which means that their color appears when they are dissolved and absorbed. Usually, they are solid powders and are soluble in water, oils, alcohols and other liquid solvents.

The solvent is determined by not only the type of dye used acid, basic or direct dyes but also the product to which that the dye solution will be applied.