It’s unhelpful to know the “exact” color of a lipstick or eyeshadow because it’s going to look totally different on various skins. It just comes down to practice/experience, and knowing how pigments are going to mesh with your skin shade and undertones. And as others have said, specific hex codes do get trademarked so that could cause problems. Though I DO agree the naming system right now is awful from an accessibility standpoint for blind folks, for whom a description like “deep warm red with brick/caramel tones” is MUCH more helpful than just being told the name is “Dragon Splash” with no further info.

As others have said, hex codes are RGB colour – each pair of characters in the code is how much a red, green, or blue light is on. Obviously that’s not what’s going on for lipstick, which are colored with pigments. Even the images in your screen – or any screen – aren’t going to accurately convey the lipstick colour (because of the pigment issue, and lighting makes a huge difference in how colours look when you photograph anything), not least because everyone’s monitor is different. So hex colors aren’t consistent across instances either.

Aside from that and the trade secrets issue (makeup companies aren’t going to want to share the formula for their most popular colour), none of this would fix the problem. People have different opinions about which colour is prettiest – their skin tone and application matters, but so do their individual preferences.

It’s like books, you wouldn’t be surprised that two different people liked two different books and wrote reviews to that end.

Colour in real life is not the same as it is in digital form. Colour depends on lighting in real life. To find the code of the colour you would have to photograph it. You would need to have standardized rules for the photography of lipsticks that all brands would have to use for all this to actually work (camera settings, background, lighting etc.). Shine and texture influence colour so that is another problem. Pigmentation and opacity of products also influences how they look on different skins and natural lip colours. I don’t think it’s worth it tbh. It also takes out some of the fun.

I agree with all the discussion of hex codes describing colors of light and not pigment, but that said, Finding Ferdinand will make you a custom blush, lipgloss, or lipstick based on whatever hex code you enter. So at least one company does do this.

I’d lean toward the fact that hexadecimal colors are hard to interpret without an understanding of their representation/function, assuming that is what you are referring to.

Manufacturers of bras can’t even properly size or offer reasonable size ranges off-the-rack, I can’t imagine makeup manufacturers going to any more trouble.