Short answer
A lake is a dye turned into a pigment by precipitating it as an insoluble compound, usually with a metal salt and often onto a colourless base such as alumina. Lakes gave painters transparent crimsons and yellows that minerals could not, but the colour still comes from the original dye molecule, so a lake is only as lightfast as that dye — and many historic lake dyes were not.
A soluble dye cannot be ground into oil paint: it would dissolve, bleed or wash out. Laking fixes it. The dye, which usually carries negatively charged groups, is combined with a metal cation — for many historic lakes an aluminium-based precipitate, and in modern azo lakes typically calcium or strontium — so that the coloured species precipitates as an insoluble salt. The precipitate is often formed onto, or later diluted with, an almost colourless inert material such as hydrated alumina, and it is this solid that the painter or ink maker disperses. The colour is decided by the organic dye; the metal and substrate mostly decide the particle, its transparency and sometimes a slight shift in hue.
A lake precipitated on a colourless base scatters little light once it is wetted by oil, so the paint is coloured but translucent — ideal for glazes. Venetian painters of the sixteenth century built rich crimson draperies by glazing red lake over an opaque underlayer of vermilion or of lake mixed with lead white: light passes through the glaze, bounces off the opaque layer and returns filtered twice, giving a depth no opaque red can match. The word itself comes from lac, the resinous secretion of the lac insect that was one of the early red dye sources, and is related to lacquer.
Laking makes a dye insoluble but it does not make its chromophore more stable to light. Red lakes from madder, brazilwood and insect sources, and many yellow lakes from plant dyes, bleach when their molecules are broken by light, and because a lake is usually used in a thin glaze there is little colourant to lose before the change shows. Where lakes were mixed with lead white, the fading is especially obvious: the white stays, the colour leaves, and a pink or purple passage drifts towards pale grey. A study of a seventeenth-century still life by Abraham Mignon showed exactly this: the light-induced fading of an organic yellow lake, together with degradation of orpiment, flattened the modelling of a yellow rose that the painter had built from light to shadow.
Lakes are still common. Many modern lake pigments are azo dyes carrying sulfonate or carboxylate groups, precipitated as calcium or strontium salts — Lithol Rubine BK, a calcium salt, is a typical example used in printing inks — and the food and cosmetics industries have renewed interest in cochineal-based colour. In artists' materials, madder lake survives mainly in synthetic form as alizarin crimson, and because alizarin itself is not highly lightfast, many makers now offer quinacridone pigments in its place. Suppliers often omit the word lake from the name, so the reliable guide is the Colour Index name and the maker's lightfastness rating rather than the colour name on the tube.
| Lake | Dye source | How it is made insoluble | Light stability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Madder lake / alizarin crimson | Madder root; later synthetic alizarin | Metal-salt precipitate, often on alumina | Fugitive; often replaced by quinacridones |
| Carmine (crimson lake) | Cochineal insect (carminic acid) | Metal-salt precipitate | Poor in light |
| Organic yellow lakes | Plant dyes | Metal-salt precipitate on a colourless base | Poor; fading documented in a 17th-century painting |
| Lithol Rubine BK | Synthetic azo dye | Calcium salt | Industrial lake used in printing inks |
Why: The red lake has faded while opaque underlayers or lead white have not.
Fix: Nothing restores it; conservators control light exposure to slow further loss, and technical imaging can show what was there.
Why: A colour name can hide a fugitive lake; the name on the tube is not the pigment.
Fix: Check the Colour Index name and the lightfastness rating on the label before relying on it for work meant to last.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
FactModerate evidence
A lake pigment is made by precipitating a dye with an inert binder or mordant, usually a metallic salt; many lake pigments are fugitive because the dyes involved are not lightfast.
Source: Lake pigment
FactStrong evidence
Chemical imaging of a 17th-century still life showed that light-induced fading of an organic yellow lake, together with orpiment degradation, irreversibly changed the painter's intended light–shadow modelling of a yellow rose.
Caveat: A single painting; the extent of lake fading varies with dye, substrate and exposure.
FactModerate evidence
Red lakes were used in translucent glazes, often over vermilion or over lake mixed with lead white, and were common in sixteenth-century Venetian painting.
Source: Lake pigment
FactModerate evidence
Rose madder is fugitive in light even in its synthetic form (alizarin crimson), and its use has been largely superseded by quinacridone pigments.
Source: Lake pigment
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.