Pigments are an inseparable part of human civilization. We all are surrounded by pigments in every sphere of life. Whether it is clothes we wear, food we eat, cosmetics we use, paint we do on our houses, books or magazines we read, computer on which we work and the list is endless in which pigments show their presence to add color and brightness in our lives. The category of the pigment can be natural, synthetic, organic, and inorganic and so on but presence of a pigment is a must.

Broad Classification of Pigments!

Pigments can be present in the form of pigment powder, aqueous state or can be gel based. In the formation of paint mainly two types of pigments are taken into consideration. These are

• Primary Pigment: Primary pigment is the principal pigment responsible to give color to the paint. Though high quality primary pigment is expensive but it is advisable to prefer quality rather than getting lured by cheap stuff. High quality primary pigment deliver uniform color shade, right granularity for better pigment dispersion and you will not need to apply it more than twice to get the desired results.
• Extender Pigment: These pigments are mainly used as add on but plays a crucial role in color intensity, hiding power, life expectancy and cleaning resistance of the paint.

Organic and Inorganic pigments!

You will find both organic and inorganic variety of primary and extender pigments in the market. Each variety has its own set of pros and cons. If we set ourselves on the task of comparing the two varieties then we can conclude the result in the following ways:

• It has been observed that organic pigments offers not only brighter color as compared to the inorganic ones but their coloring strength is also much better than the inorganic counterpart. This characteristic gives a brownie point to organic pigments over inorganic pigments.
• Second important point to be considered in the modern times of global warming and other environmental hazards is environment safety from the pigments. It has been seen the organic pigments are much safe to use and are environment friendly as compared to inorganic pigments. They do not pose any potential threat to the environment.
• Inorganic pigments beat the organic counterpart in terms of resistance to light. Their high resistance to light makes them a preferable choice in paints. Low light resistance is one of the major weaknesses which scientists are trying to overcome in organic pigments.
• Secondly cost of producing inorganic pigments is much less as compared to organic pigments. Expensive organic pigments are preferred by those who wish to go green and can afford to bear high manufacturing costs.

With development of science and technology, scientists are consistently working on producing organic pigments of high performance and efficiency. They have also achieved lot of success in bulk production of organic pigments and curb the manufacturing cost. Industrial sector is slowly shifting towards organic pigment sector and with time and development we will see major shift.