ADVANTAGES OF CARBON BLACK VS. BLACK IRON OXIDE AND BROVI PIGMENT FORMULATION TECHNOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
The key characteristic of high-quality black iron oxide is its stability—it maintains its black hue without turning red when applied to the skin. However, if it does turn red, it can be quite challenging to remedy. Additionally, if the product contains chromium hydroxide, it introduces further complications.

This leads us to the central question: why does BROVI choose Carbon Black over black iron oxide?

PROS AND CONS OF IRON OXIDE
Because black oxide has obvious drawbacks:

• Like any iron oxide pigment, black oxide is tough to implant into the skin. The work, which normally takes an hour and a half, takes 3–4 hours—we tested it ourselves. Even yellow oxide implanted faster than black.
• It cannot be ground down as finely as soot. This results in at least two problems: again, long implantation times and, consequently, low retention after healing.
• It turns red when permanent makeup is removed with a laser, it heavily settles at the bottom of the bottle. To stabilize the suspension, you have to shake the bottle for a long time.

The only advantage of black iron oxide is that it’s a biogenic material that is well metabolized by the body and can fade to almost 0. But this is not certain, judging by the purple brows wandering around our vast land for about ten years.

ADVANTAGES OF CARBON BLACK
Carbon Black has several undeniable advantages:

• Initially, the pigment is very fine, 1–2 µm. After grinding it in our laboratory, we move on to the nanometer scale. Such fine particles can be very easily and quickly implanted into the skin.
• It does not settle at the bottom of the bottle.
• It fragments with a laser and is then very quickly metabolized by the body.
• By a crucial parameter called "tinting," it significantly surpasses black oxide — this means that Carbon Black is a blacker pigment.
• When ground, it is capable of covering literally everything. Based on this capability, we developed a technology to reduce the content of Carbon Black in the pigment by half. This was done so that none of our brown shades would turn gray in your clients’ skin. From now on, this is physically impossible both in the short and long term.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE COLOUR
And here you can see in practice what the reduction of Carbon Black looks like and how the updated BROVI series compares with the pigments from the beginning of 2023:

 

Sample on test — “Roasted Chestnut”

1 — "Chestnut" with 100% Carbon Black. The pigment is mixed as 99% of manufacturers do today. What do we see? Visible black pigment particles, uneven surface coloring, gaps. 

2— updated "Chestnut" with 50% less black pigment. Mixing by our technology goes through several stages and takes a significant amount of time. What do we see? Despite having half the amount of black pigment, we maintain the desired shade. But! Because there is significantly less black pigment and the pigment is very finely ground, we get an ultra-stable suspension and even coloring without visible black pigment particles and gaps. The shade became more "milky," but titanium dioxide has nothing to do with it.

How does this affect artists' work? Pleasantly: the pigment is even easier to implant into the skin, the color retention after healing reaches 90%, there is no grayness that Carbon Black might give for the entire duration of the permanent makeup until the next touch-up, and it will fade more evenly.

3 — intermediate stage of mixing "Chestnut" before the invented technological process. Here you just need to see the reddish pigment and understand that this is what "Chestnut" looks like if you add 50% black pigment of the declared amount. And how to make this red hue a normal "Chestnut"? Technological secrets.

CONCLUSION

• At BROVI, we strive for progress, so we consider all complaints and try to address them to the maximum. The problem of grey brows has existed for a long time and applies to every brand producing pigments. Black iron oxide does not solve the problem of grey brows. Neither does colour theory nor working with correctors. What does solve it is technology, chemistry, and mathematics—and that’s exactly what we do.
• Using our pigments means you are working with a unique product whose production technology has not yet been matched by anyone else. Let’s call it the new generation of pigments.