Which Life Color Plus Shades to Stock First

A hundred and sixty variants is a range, not a shopping list. Because every one costs the same £3.49, the usual stocking logic — buy the cheap ones, ration the expensive ones — does not apply here at all. What you stock should be decided entirely by what walks through your door.

The flat price changes the decision

On most professional colour lines the high-lift shades and the vivid reds cost more than the naturals, which quietly pushes salons towards formulating with whatever is cheapest to hand.

Here, a 12.11 costs the same as a 6.0. The consequence is worth stating plainly: there is never a financial reason to use the nearest shade instead of the right one. Your stocking decision is purely about turnover and cash tied up on a shelf.

The starter twelve

If you are opening the line from scratch, these twelve tubes will cover more of a typical UK column than any other twelve in the range:

Twelve tubes is £41.88. Add 20 volume developer and you have a working grey-coverage and everyday-colour kit for under £50.

What to add second

Once you know which conversations you are actually having:

• Depths 4 and 9 in the naturals — as soon as you have brunette or very light clients regularly.
• .03 or .07 at your busiest depth — the warm-or-cool decision. Which one depends on your column, and you will know within a month.
• .13 shades (6.13, 7.13) — ash with a gold secondary. Very often what a client means by "ashy", per the ash article.
• 10 volume developer — for refreshing lengths. Under-bought almost everywhere, and the step that keeps clients' ends from going dark over years.
• Doubled reflects at one depth — 7.44 or 6.66 if you have clients whose warm tones keep fading.

What not to buy first

The same applies to the darkest depths. A 1.0 and a 3.0 are worth having eventually; they are not worth having on day one unless you know you need them.

Buy the chart before the shades

This sounds backwards and is not. Without a chart you cannot consult properly, and without consulting properly you will guess at which shades you need — which is how salons end up with forty tubes and still not the right one.

• The salon chart, £83.49 — for the consultation area. This is the one clients point at.
• The mini chart, £29.34 — for the colour bar and for mobile work.

A printed chart under salon lighting is also the only consultation tool that does not lie about colour, which a phone screen certainly does.

Stock depth, not breadth

The mistake to avoid is one tube of forty shades. What you actually want early on is two or three tubes of the twelve you use constantly, because the shade that runs out mid-Saturday is always a natural.

Naturals turn over fastest for a structural reason: on any client over 50% white, half the formula is a natural. So your 6.0 empties roughly twice as fast as the reflect it is mixed with. Ordering them in pairs from the start prevents the most common stockroom failure. More on managing that in stock control across 160 variants.

Let the column decide

After three months, look at your formula cards rather than your shelf. The shades that appear repeatedly are your real stock list, and they will not be quite what you guessed — every column skews somewhere, whether that is grey coverage, blondes or brunettes.

Restock to what the cards say. It is a ten-minute job and it is more accurate than any generic recommendation, including this one.

The commercial side — part 1 of 5.
Next: Stock control across 160 variants →

Prices as published on lifecolorplus.co.uk at the time of writing.