color science<\/a> for L\u2019Oreal in the U.S., heard him give the opening keynote address in June to the Inter-Society Color Council conference in Rochester, New York. Mylonas had talked about his research into ways different languages communicate about color.<\/p>\nFor more than 15 years, Mylonas, a former visual communication designer, has been researching color and languages. He said it has been found that, while there are approximately 10 core color names in most languages, a native speaker is \u201cable to use about 30 to 50 color names without any additional training\u201d. For every core color, like red, there is an offshoot, such as burgundy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can see thousands of different colors,\u201d continued Mylonas. \u201cBut these are being somehow compressed into a much smaller set of color names.\u201d<\/p>\n
His research, using technology and mass data surveys, has set out to map how different languages describe colors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marek invited Mylonas and Sinkeviciute, who also addressed the ISCC conference, to give a virtual talk to about 80 employees at the world\u2019s largest cosmetics company as part of her \u201cColor Science Insights\u201d series, which invites external experts to present their work.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Dimitris-Mylonas1400.jpg\")
Dimitris Mylonas, associate professor in data science at Northeastern University in London. Courtesy photo<\/p>\n
Mylonas told Northeastern Global News that the main message of his talk was that not all colors have a universal meaning in every international market due to variations in the local language.<\/p>\n
Giving an example, he said that in English there is a \u201cunitary\u201d word for blue, whereas in Greek, there are two separate words \u2014 \u03b3\u03b1\u03bb\u03ac\u03b6\u03b9\u03bf (ghalazio) for light blue and \u03ba\u03c5\u03b1\u03bd\u03cc (kyano) for dark blue. This is true in Russian, Thai and other languages, Mylonas added.<\/p>\n
Some producers \u201cassume there\u2019s somehow a universal color categorization and that all languages easily translate from one to the other,\u201d said Mylonas. \u201cBut this is not exactly true.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said L\u2019Oreal, as an international brand, was keen to understand the \u201cdynamic approach\u201d required when selecting or communicating about colors across a wide range of cultures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a system that can adapt to different markets, where people speak different languages, then you can achieve a much better color communication \u2014 that was the whole idea,\u201d said Mylonas.<\/p>\n
Such a change has the potential to improve customer satisfaction and drive down return rates of L\u2019Oreal\u2019s cosmetic products, he argued, especially those that have strong color descriptions, such as hair dyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the market data I have seen for global returns, about 7% to 10% are due to it being the wrong color,\u201d Mylonas continued. \u201cThat could mean, if you put this practice in the global e-commerce market, it could be a big fix. Every percentage by which you shrink that headline figure down, the better it will be in terms of profit margins, logistics and sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n
During her part of the presentation to L\u2019Oreal, Sinkeviciute shared her research on the way younger and older people regard colors differently.<\/p>\n
By collecting English language data through online surveys, she has discovered that older people tend to use fewer color names to describe what they see. \u201cThere is a color vocabulary richness that declines with age,\u201d Sinkeviciute explained.<\/p>\n
Sinkeviciute said the audience at L\u2019Oreal was intrigued to understand why that is. It is also a question she hopes to shed some light on by the time her thesis has been submitted.<\/p>\n
Theories include that older people were not exposed to as many colors as people in their twenties are, or that, as previous generations have aged, consensus has grown around how shades of colors fit into the 10 to 12 core color types.<\/p>\n
But it could also be due to aging, Sinkeviciute said. \u201cThere could be reasons, like for example, low-level color vision declining with age due to the lens of the eye yellowing as it gets exposed to more and more ultraviolet light,\u201d she said. \u201cSo that could be another reason why older people would tend to group more colors under one color name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marek, who moved from L\u2019Oreal\u2019s Paris office to take-up her current post, said the presentations given by the Northeastern academics had given her research and innovation team pause for thought when it came to thinking about designing colors, and also about how to market them globally.<\/p>\n
\u201cColor is the number one factor that drives what you want to buy,\u201d Marek told Northeastern Global News. \u201cMake-up is all about color, hair color is all about color.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a worldwide brand, she said it would be \u201cimpossible\u201d to launch distinct products for each of their core markets, which includes the U.S., China and France. Instead, she said Mylonas and Sinkeviciute had helped convey how the brand could communicate in more tailored ways about what it is selling.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe can definitely adjust how we talk and communicate about this product \u2014 all the advertising we are doing around it, maybe how our models speak when they are on TV, and also what we put on the package,\u201d Marek added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main takeaway for me is this awareness that they [L\u2019Oreal\u2019s researchers] know that there are different ways of communicating about color, and this is something that is worth exploring and thinking about when they\u2019re developing a product.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 For a global brand like L\u2019Oreal, a product needs to be marketable throughout the world. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12905],"tags":[10369,19164,1580,19165,19166,19167,5130,66],"class_list":["post-25990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-loreal","tag-cosmetics","tag-data-science","tag-loreal","tag-languages","tag-northeastern-university-london","tag-nu-research","tag-research","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}