How can recycled, pre-owned colour inspire the design futures we want to make?

Every colour choice is also a decision about material cycles and sensory qualities, about markets and resources, about the past lives a pigment carries and the human needs and desires it might serve next.

CMF (Colour, Material, Finish) is the layer of design that decides how something looks, feels and reads to us: the exact tone of a surface, the weave of a fabric, whether something feels warm, tactile, or cold. It's often invisible as a discipline, but it's the part you actually touch and respond to.

This isn't a standard colour workshop. You'll work hands-on with two colour worlds at once - waste-derived pigments from Chroma Waste Lab's post-consumer textile research, and Colour of Saying's own CMF library of industry samples sourced from global manufacturers. Making pigment from what's already here is a bit like chemistry, but for the eyes, the reaction and play of mixing ingredients opens up thinking and imagination.

No prior CMF experience needed. Guided by Laura Perryman, you'll build a moodworld - an atmospheric palette constructed directly from these pigments and samples - speculating on where this colour could go next: footwear, architecture, furniture, lighting, fashion, and new materials.

What you'll leave with:

• Hands-on access to a inspiring CMF library of colour and material samples 
• A future-facing CMF palette built from waste-derived pigments
• A working approach to circular colour specification
• A different way of seeing what waste can become

Your host:

Laura Perryman is the founder of Colour of Saying, a CMF and colour strategy studio based in Walthamstow. She works with global clients across architecture, technology, home and material manufacturing on how colour, material and finish shape our experience of the things around us, and writes and researches colour, most recently The Colour Bible and the Ethical and Circular Colour Reports. Much of her seasonal colour research happens close to home: foraging and natural dye work at a local flower farm and advising global brands on how to find unique colour futures. 

Who it's for: Designers, makers, developers and the design-curious - no prior CMF experience required! 

Practical info:

• Date/time: Saturday 20 September, 11.00am–1.00pm
• Duration: 2 hours
• Venue: Switchboard Studios, Uplands Business Park, London E17 5QJ
• Accessibility: Fully accessible venue, ground floor
• What to bring: Nothing required, materials provided. Wear clothes you don't mind getting a little inky.
• Cancellation/refund policy: Refunds up to 48hrs notice

This workshop is part of

Colour Lab: from waste to value

Textile Waste as Colour: A Circular Economy Exhibition & Workshop Experience

London Design Festival 2026 | 18–20 September

Colour Lab returns to Switchboard Studios for London Design Festival 2026, the third iteration of a successful LDF programme in Waltham Forest, this year developed in research partnership with Chroma Waste Lab from Australia, and following colour from waste to value.

A three-day, waste-to-studio experience of exhibition, open studio, and hands-on participatory sessions, tracing how post-consumer textiles become new pigments, dyes, and inks. Visitors encounter waste differently here, not as the end of a material's life, but as the beginning of its next one. The exhibition presents both the science and the design applications: what the pigment looks like, and how designers and makers could put it to work.

Building on Colour Lab 2025's nature-to-studio journey, this year's programme moves from origins to futures, gathered around a central question:

“What is the value in waste colour, and who in our community holds the knowledge to unlock it?”