Why I Keep Sending Shades Back to the Lab

There's a moment every founder in beauty knows too well. The courier arrives, you tear open the package, twist open the bullet, and swatch it on your own hand and your stomach drops. The shade that looked flawless on screen, that the lab signed off on, that ticked every box on paper, simply isn't right. Not wrong exactly. Just... not what it was supposed to be. And so, back it goes. Again.

I've lost count of how many times I've done this. Colleagues have gently asked if I'm being too particular. I don't think I am. I think I'm being accurate because the truth is, the shade may look perfect in the lab, but completely different on Indian skin, and until it looks right on us, it isn't done.

The Lab Isn't Lying. It's Just Not Looking at Us.

Here's what most people don't realise about how lip products are developed. Many shades are initially tested on lighter, more even-toned lips, simply because that's where the testing panels or reference standards often originate. The problem is what happens when that shade travels. A deep berry that reads rich and grown-up on lighter skin can suddenly look bright pink on us. A rich maroon that looks sophisticated in the lab notes can turn mauve, or worse, fade into an unintentional light pink the moment it meets a deeper, warmer base. It works the other way too. 

A shade that looks deep enough in the lab can look surprisingly light on Indian skin, because the pigment simply doesn't have the density to hold its own. Browns are the trickiest culprits. On paper, they look earthy and rich. On deeper skin tones, many of them lose that richness and turn dull or flat, sitting on the lips instead of blending into them. And nudes, the category every brand loves to launch, can easily wash Indian skin tones out entirely, leaving lips looking more "corpse" than "your lips but better."

I've watched light browns that looked elegant and universally flattering on lighter skin simply disappear completely on us. Not fade. Disappear. As if the lab sample and the real thing belonged to two different products.

Why This Keeps Happening

The honest answer is representation. When products are developed in Europe or Korea, Indian skin is not always represented enough during testing. So when samples finally reach us, what they thought they created is often not what we actually see. It's not malice, it's just the distance between where a formula is built and where it's actually going to be worn.

And here's the part that makes it genuinely complex: Indian skin tones aren't one thing. Undertones alone are incredibly varied: warm, neutral, golden, cool and then overtones like olive layer on top of that, changing how a pigment reads all over again. Add to that the fact that pigmented lips affect how the final shade shows up, and that two-toned lips can make the same lipstick look like two different colours on the same mouth, and you start to see why a single lab swatch can never be the final word. A shade cannot be judged only by how it looks in the packaging or on one skin tone. It has to be judged on all of our varied, beautiful, complicated us.

What "Right" Actually Means at SVAM™

This is exactly why I keep sending shades back until they look right on Indian skin, not just in the lab. It's slower. It's more expensive. It occasionally makes our formulation partners sigh audibly on calls. I've sat with our manufacturer for days, sometimes hours at a stretch, just to get one shade closer to right. It's not unusual for it to take 10 to 12 revisions, sometimes spread across years, before a shade is truly built for Indian skin across our range. And that's before we even get to making it last through our weather and our real lives the chai breaks, the sweat, the eight-hour days

That's why every shade we release is undertone-calibrated, designed with our warm, golden, neutral and cool bases and olive overtones in mind from day one, not adjusted after the fact. It's why we insist on climate-stable pigments for all-day wear, because a shade that shifts colour by 4 pm in Mumbai humidity or Delhi heat was never really tested for India in the first place. Our approach isn't just about pigment, it's about performance. A lip crayon for Indian weather needs to survive chai breaks, sweat, and eight-hour workdays without turning patchy or drying out your lips into submission.

That's the thinking behind our Intelligent Clean™ formulas: a non-drying lip colour with a soft matte finish that gives you humidity-friendly performance instead of promises that crack by noon. It's lip products for Indian climate, built with lip products for Indian women in mind, designed around Indian skin & lifestyle rather than imported and hoped for the best.

Your Lips, Your Verdict

So here's my honest question: when you try a SVAM™ shade, watch it, wear it through your day, catch it in different light, morning sun, office tubelight, evening golden hour. If something feels off, tell us. Genuinely. Every message helps us send another shade back to the lab, one more time, until it's actually right.

Because at the end of the day, the only lab test that really matters is the one that happens on your lips.

Explore shades calibrated for Indian skin at SVAM™ Beauty and if a shade doesn't feel like you, we want to hear about it.