Munsell and Ostwald colour spaces: A comparison in the field of hair colouring

Abstract Colour science has had a very long history, dotted over the millennia with many contributions from the most diverse fields of human knowledge. At the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Henry Munsell, an artist formally trained in academia, and Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909 and amateur painter, each envisioned and developed a colour system with a related colour atlas. Both authors recognized the importance of the visual relationship between colours, which they conceived as sensations stemming from, but not merely confined to, pigments and light. We hereby describe the salient features of these colour spaces, their strengths and weaknesses, the authors' analogy of intents and divergence in execution. The contribution of this paper is a discussion on how these are employed both in Italian educational facilities, and salon practice, as well as a suggestion about their use within the industry of human hair cosmetics.