london light

the standard consultation for a colour appointment goes roughly like this: the client sits in the salon chair, the colourist holds swatches against their face under salon lighting — usually warm halogen or LED — and a formula is agreed. the result is designed to look good in that moment, in that light.

it often does. the client leaves happy. the photograph taken by the salon looks excellent.

then february arrives. grey sky, diffuse northern light, the kind of flat overcast that london produces for six months of the year. and the warm caramel balayage that glowed in the salon reads mousy and flat on the street. the brightness that felt natural indoors disappears. the warmth the client paid for is invisible.

this happens because colour is not absolute. it is a relationship between pigment and light source.

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london has what photographers call overcast diffusion — a near-permanent soft box above the city that scatters light evenly, removes contrast, and shifts the ambient colour temperature toward cool and blue. under this light, warm tones flatten. cool tones either sharpen or open up, depending on the specific shade.

i learnt to account for this when i moved here from osaka. japanese light is direct and warm for much of the year. colour formulae that worked there looked wrong here. i had to recalibrate.

the adjustment is not complicated, but it requires making it deliberately. for warm tones — caramels, coppers, auburn — i add more than the formula calls for, knowing london will take some of that warmth back. for cool and ash tones, i work with the light rather than against it, using the ambient cool to make ashy blondes lift rather than go grey.

i also ask every colour client the same three questions before we begin: what does your light look like at home in the morning. where do you spend most of the day. and when you imagine yourself at your best, where are you standing.

colour should be designed for the life you live, in the light you actually inhabit.

not for the mirror in this room.