Why do old photos turn pink or orange?

Look through a family album from the 1960s or 70s and you'll often find photos that have turned pink, red or orange, with skies gone purple and grass gone brown. Here is why it happens, and what can be done.

How colour prints are made

A colour print holds its picture in three layers of dye: cyan, magenta and yellow. Mixed together, they make every colour you see. The trouble is that these dyes are not equally stable. Over the years they fade at different rates, and the balance between them is lost.

Why the pink and orange cast?

In many older prints the cyan dye, the blue-green one, fades fastest. With less cyan left, what remains is mostly magenta and yellow, which together look red, pink or orange. That's why whites turn pink and blue skies turn purple or grey.

Some prints also develop a yellow stain across the whole picture, especially in the white borders, as leftover chemicals in the paper break down with age.

Why the 1960s and 70s were worst

Colour printing became cheap and popular in these decades, but the papers and dyes used at the time were far less stable than later ones. Prints from the late 1980s onwards generally hold their colour much better. That is why the oldest colour photos in a box are often the most faded, while the black-and-white ones from decades earlier can still look crisp.

What makes it worse

• Heat and humidity, such as a loft, garage or conservatory.
• Light, especially photos left on display in a sunny room.
• Poor storage, such as sticky "magnetic" albums and PVC sleeves.

See our guide to storing old photos to slow things down.

Can the colours be brought back?

Often, yes, and surprisingly well. A faded print still holds most of its detail. It's the balance of colours that has gone wrong. Once scanned, the colours can be rebalanced: the cast removed, skin tones corrected and the sky made blue again.

How far it can go depends on how much is left. A mildly faded print can look almost new. A severely faded one, where a colour has almost disappeared, will improve a lot but may never look perfect.

• Every photo we scan comes back colour-corrected, cleaned, straightened and cropped. If you'd like the untouched original scans as well, before our colour correction, add them to your order for £10.
• For badly faded or damaged photos, our restoration service corrects each photo by hand.

Don't wait

Fading doesn't stop. The sooner a faded photo is scanned, the more there is to work with.