Colourless

Colourless is a British haircare brand built around a single idea: an at-home system for removing unwanted hair dye without bleach, ammonia or peroxide. Based in Queenborough, Kent, it positioned its kits as a gentler, do-it-yourself alternative to salon colour corrections [1]. The brand is no longer an independent operation. It passed into the portfolio of TAM Beauty, the UK group that later became Revolution Beauty Group PLC, and it continues to be sold today through Revolution Beauty's website [2]. Its own dedicated site, colourless.co.uk, has not been meaningfully updated since around 2016.

The year Colourless itself launched is not documented in available sources. What is recorded is that by November 2014 it already sat inside TAM Beauty's stable of brands, listed alongside Make-Up Revolution, Freedom Make-Up, I Heart Make-Up and Face B4 [3].

Colourless belongs to Revolution Beauty Group PLC, the company formerly known as TAM Beauty, founded by Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth. The founding year of that parent company is reported inconsistently: the UK statutory register at Companies House shows the related legal entity, Tam Beauty (Haircare) Limited, incorporated on 19 December 2013 (originally as Freedom Beauty Limited), while Wikipedia gives the company's founding as 2014 [4][5]. The 2014 date appears to track the operational launch of Revolution Beauty and Make-Up Revolution rather than the date of incorporation.

The brand's IP-holding entity, Tam Beauty (Haircare) Limited, was renamed from Freedom Beauty Limited in December 2015 and then dissolved on 6 June 2017, with the brand rights folded into the wider group [4]. TAM Beauty rebranded as Revolution Beauty in 2018, and Revolution Beauty Group PLC floated on London's AIM market in 2021 [5]. Manufacturing of the Colourless line, as stated in the brand's own site footer, was carried out by the British firm Medichem under licence for TAM Beauty [1].

The Colourless range centred on hair colour removers sold as multi-part kits. According to the company, the system works by gently lifting unwanted permanent, oxidised synthetic dyes rather than stripping or bleaching the hair, leaving it at a pH suitable for immediate re-colouring. A three-step kit pairs an activator and remover with a post-treatment buffer; the brand describes the result as hair left "at a suitable pH level for safe re-colouring" once the buffer step is applied.

The legacy lineup ran to four products. Max Effect was promoted as the strongest remover, said to contain "25% more active ingredients" for stubborn build-up and dark shades; Max Conditioning added argan oil and keratin aimed at dry or frequently coloured hair; Pre-Colour was sold as a deep-cleansing preparation before a new dye; and Go Blonde was a hair lightener. Notably, Go Blonde sat apart from the rest: it is a bleach-based lightener, which is why the brand's "no bleach or ammonia" claim carried an asterisk applying only to the colour removers, not the lightener.

The company's central promise was captured in its tagline, "Simply wash your colour away," and a marketing claim that the products are "safe and gentle" with "no bleach" and "no ammonia." It also stated that the removers contain no peroxide, bleach or ammonia and are therefore safe to use during pregnancy, while advising customers to consult a doctor if concerned.

In its TAM Beauty years the brand reached customers through UK channels including the group's own Tam Beauty site and the drugstore chains Boots and Superdrug, placing it firmly in the budget tier; a 2016 review recorded a price of £6.66 against a regular price of £9.99 [6]. The colourless.co.uk site also advertised planned stockists in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, the United States, Canada and the Nordic markets of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but those pages remained marked "coming soon" and the expansion does not appear to have been realised.

Colourless is best described as an acquired brand with a dormant standalone presence. Its dedicated website is frozen in time, with a 2016 copyright line, an expired security certificate and HTTP-only access, and its non-UK stockist pages never went live. The brand itself, however, survives inside Revolution Beauty Group PLC, where it has been reduced to essentially a single product, the Colourless Extra Hair Colour Remover, sold via revolutionbeauty.com [2][7].

Under Revolution Beauty's stewardship the surviving product carries certifications that did not appear on the older brand site: it is marketed as vegan and cruelty-free, and described as PETA-approved animal test free [7]. These reflect the parent group's company-wide policy rather than anything stated on legacy Colourless material.

The controversy attached to Colourless is a parent-company matter rather than anything specific to the brand. In 2022, Revolution Beauty Group PLC became the subject of an independent accounting investigation, carried out by Macfarlanes LLP and Forensic Risk Alliance, after auditors raised serious concerns. Co-founder and chief executive Adam Minto, who had stepped back the previous month, resigned with immediate effect in November 2022 [8]. The investigation did not concern the Colourless brand directly, but it forms part of the history of the company that now owns it.