Blue Earth Summit

What if paint could do more than decorate a wall?

What if colour could actively improve how we feel, how we work and how we live, while reducing harm across one of the world's most polluting industries?

That's the ambition behind Yes Colours, the latest venture joining Blue Earth's portfolio.

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A COVID-era Idea with Global Ambition

Founded during lockdown, Yes Colours is not simply another premium paint brand. It is a design-led technology business with a mission to redefine how colour is produced, experienced and understood, from manufacturing innovation to neuroscience-driven wellbeing insights.

Like many breakthrough businesses, it was born from a moment of frustration, and a statistic that demanded action.

Founder and CEO John Stubbs, whose background spans industrial design, branding and sustainable materials, discovered that around 98% of paint waste ends up in landfill. For an industry worth over £4 billion annually in the UK and nearly $200 billion globally, the lack of innovation was striking.

"Paint hasn't really changed in 60 years. We saw an opportunity to disrupt the sector by tackling waste at the start of the product lifecycle, not just trying to fix it at the end."

The result was a radically different approach: the world's first fully recyclable paint pouch, proprietary tinting technology designed to reduce waste, and a design philosophy rooted in colour as a driver of human wellbeing. What began as a sustainability-led innovation quickly became something much bigger.

 

Colour as a Human Experience

Co-founder and Creative Director Emma Bestley brings a rare perspective to the business, both commercially and neurologically.

With a background in advertising, fashion and brand strategy, Emma also has grapheme-colour synesthesia: a neurological condition where senses overlap, causing words, numbers and emotions to appear as colour.

It's a detail that shapes everything about Yes Colours' philosophy.

"We don't talk about colour in abstract design language. We talk about music, nature, nostalgia, how colour makes you feel. It's about human experience."

This thinking underpins the company's growing consultancy arm, which works with architects, developers and brands to design spaces that support wellbeing, inclusion and neurodiversity. In a world increasingly focused on mental health and built environment performance, colour is an overlooked but powerful lever.

 

From Sustainable Product to Technology Platform

While the recyclable packaging captured early attention, Yes Colours' long-term opportunity lies in data.

The company is developing AI-enabled tinting systems and a biometric colour intelligence platform, a database linking colour choices to measurable physiological and neurological responses. Their ambition is to create a new global standard for colour effectiveness in the built environment: comparable to what Pantone achieved for colour referencing, but grounded in human science.

Applications span real estate, workplace design, healthcare, education, hospitality and retail, sectors where the ability to design environments that actively support human performance is becoming a genuine competitive advantage.

 

Proven Traction and a Clear Path to Scale

Five years in, Yes Colours has already achieved:

• £1.7 million raised to date from angels, friends and family, and strategic partners.
• 40–60% year-on-year growth.
• A diversified revenue model spanning direct-to-consumer, B2B supply and high-margin design consultancy.
• New retail partnerships launching in 2026.
• Organic demand emerging in international markets, particularly the United States.

The business expects to reach break-even in late 2026. This raise (up to £2 million) is focused on accelerating commercial scaling, expanding retail distribution, developing the technology platform and preparing for a Series A.

 

Why Blue Earth

Yes Colours exemplifies the ventures Blue Earth exists to support: a large addressable market with clear disruption potential, technology innovation aligned with sustainability, a human-centred product with global relevance, and a commercially disciplined team.

Their journey also reflects a wider shift, one Blue Earth has been tracking across industries, where environmental performance, human wellbeing and business success are no longer separate objectives. They are deeply, structurally interconnected.

As Blue Earth expands internationally, including into New York, Yes Colours is a venture built to scale alongside that community.

 

Looking Ahead

By 2030, the founders envision Yes Colours as more than a paint company. They want to become the global authority on colour intelligence, licensing their platform to designers, developers and brands worldwide.

In their words, they want to answer a question that has never been fully solved: not just what colour looks like, but what it actually does to us.

If they get there, every wall becomes part of a data-driven system designed to improve human experience. And one of the world's most traditional industries becomes one of its most progressive.