How color and colorants play a powerful role in home and laundry products

Color plays a critical role in how consumers connect with home and laundry care. At Milliken, we design colorant solutions like Liquitint® Verafree™ that balance aesthetic appeal, safety, and label-friendly formulations.

Consumers are faced with many choices on supermarket shelves. Branding and differentiation are two elements high on the list which influence purchasing decisions across a broad range of product categories. This includes the colorants found in home and laundry care products.

Color is a powerful element in grabbing attention and conveying a message about a product's quality and special features.

Understanding the psychological element of color

Smart producers and marketers of consumer product goods know there's a strong psychological element tied to color. It conveys uniqueness, personalization, accentuates features, and defines an experience as consumers interact with brands.

• Blue often signals freshness, cleanliness, and performance. Ideal for detergents and fabric softeners.
• Green communicates calmness, balance, and approachability, making it a versatile choice for home and laundry care products.
• Yellow or orange tones can communicate energy and optimism in multipurpose cleaners.

Color can influence mood, appetite, and even perceived product strength. Understanding the psychological impact of color is essential to product marketing success.

Milliken’s deep understanding of color psychology and chemistry has been refined over decades of innovation. Since 1964, when we first introduced our proprietary Versatint® washable colorants for textile identification, we have continued to pioneer color technologies across a wide range of industries—from home and laundry care to automotive, coatings, packaging, and plastics. Today, Milliken’s color experts combine market insight and technical expertise to anticipate emerging trends and formulate solutions that meet evolving consumer expectations.

Choosing colorants for your home and laundry care products

As consumers demand and respond to the uniqueness of color, global trends favoring sustainability also mean that brands and their products must reflect a commitment to higher quality and sustainable processes.

Milliken's Liquitint polymeric colorants provide unrivaled benefits in combining dynamic color variations with excellent processability. The water-soluble and non-staining colorants are compatible with the most challenging active ingredients, including additives and higher perfume levels.

The latest extension of the trusted Liquitint line, Liquitint Verafree™ is a biocide-free, water-soluble colorant platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) and industrial and institutional products. It allows brands to achieve vibrant, stable colors while meeting label-friendly and preservative-free formulation requirements.

Liquitint Verafree offers:

• Biocide-free microbial stability
• Bright, vivid color shades using a primary set with an extensive color space
• True liquid colorants for both liquid and solid formulations
• Easy processing with a wide range of pH suitability
• Water solubility
• Excellent stability
• Minimal hand, hard-surface, fabric, and equipment staining—even at high color loadings

With solutions like Liquitint® Verafree™, brands can confidently combine vibrant, stable color with safe, label-friendly formulations, helping their products stand out on crowded shelves while meeting evolving consumer expectations.

By understanding the psychological impact of color and leveraging advanced colorant technologies, producers and marketers can create products that not only catch the eye but also build trust, convey quality, and inspire consumer confidence.

At Milliken, we continue to innovate at the intersection of color science, sustainability, and consumer insight, ensuring your products deliver both performance and visual appeal.

Connect with our color experts today to explore how the right colorants can elevate your home and laundry care products and help your brand stand out.