Removing a colour cast
A colour cast rarely jumps out, but it drags the whole photo down. White walls turn yellow, wood looks orange, and the flat appears stuffier than it is.
BeforeAfterEvery light source has its own colour. Incandescent bulbs and many warm LEDs glow yellow to orange, daylight in shade drifts blue, and energy-saving lamps can go green. The camera tries to compensate but often misses, especially when several light sources mix in one room.
Why the colour mood matters
Colour carries feeling. A slight yellow cast makes a freshly renovated room look yellowed and aged; a blue cast makes it feel cold and uninviting. Buyers judge a flat in seconds, and the sense of cleanliness depends heavily on whether the whites are actually white.
The simplest reference point
- Find a surface in the frame that should be neutral white or grey, such as a wall, ceiling or window frame.
- Correct the white balance so that surface reads neutral, with no yellow and no blue.
- Then check the wood and skin tones, since these reveal any overcorrection fastest.
Mixed light is the hard case
The trickiest situation is warm artificial light meeting cool daylight in the same room. One half of the frame goes yellow, the other blue, and a single slider cannot save both. Here it helps either to switch off the artificial light and shoot with daylight only, or to adjust just the offending area in editing.
White balance corrects only how the light renders colour; it changes nothing about the property. You show the same wall colour a buyer would see on site, just without the lamp's distortion. That makes the correction harmless and label-free, as long as you hit the true colour rather than inventing a prettier one.