Sephora offers colorful store services

Sephora is offering some colorful store services. The specialty beauty retailer is unveiling two new features of its Color IQ foundation service, which it operates in partnership with Pantone, in all U.S. stores.

These two new complimentary in-store services let customers filter through Pantone’s SkinTone library and determine their most flattering colors from more than 3,500 lipstick shades and more than 400 concealer shades.

Powered by the Color IQ device launched in 2012, the new lip and concealer matching services precisely determine the best color options based on the client’s personalized Pantone skin tone shade. The Color IQ device uses tri-directional color image capture technology to record 27 color-accurate images in 1.8 seconds, using eight different visible illuminations and one ultraviolet illumination for precision matching.

This data is synthesized into a grid of 100x100 pixels, which then becomes a color composite and is assigned an official Pantone skin tone number.

Customers can select from more than 3,500 lip shades in seven color families, and results can even be sorted further by texture, finish, and format, then emailed directly for future reference.