White Balance Explained: Why Your Photos Look Too Orange or Blue

Your photos are sharp and well-exposed — but they look weirdly orange or horribly blue. Here's how white balance works and how to fix it. 📸

This is one of those photography settings that nobody really explains to beginners. But once you understand it — and it really doesn't take long — you'll stop wondering why your photos look a bit off and start knowing exactly what to do about it. 💡

📚 IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:

✅ What white balance actually is (and why it matters)

✅ Why your indoor photos look too orange 🟠

✅ Why outdoor photos sometimes look too blue or cold ❄️

✅ When to trust Auto White Balance (and when not to)

✅ How to use white balance presets on your camera

✅ How to fix white balance perfectly when you shoot RAW

✅ The grey card trick that professionals use for perfect colour 🎨

Whether you're using a camera or your phone, this episode will help you understand one of photography's most fundamental settings and fix your colour problems for good. 📱📷

💡 THE 7 TIPS COVERED:

1️⃣ What White Balance Actually Is — and Why It Matters

2️⃣ Why Your Indoor Photos Look Too Orange

3️⃣ Why Outdoor Photos Sometimes Look Too Blue or Too Cold

4️⃣ How to Use Auto White Balance — and When to Trust It

5️⃣ How to Use White Balance Presets on Your Camera

6️⃣ How to Fix White Balance in Editing When You Shoot RAW

7️⃣ The Grey Card Trick — Your Secret Weapon for Perfect White Balance

🔗 USEFUL LINKS:

📝 Blog Post (Full Episode Text)

 🎓 Photography for Beginners Hub Page:

📖 RELATED EPISODES

• Episode 226 - Why Are My Photos Too Dark? Understanding Exposure for Beginners

• Episode 4 - What Is The Exposure Triangle?

• Episode 21 - What Does Exposure Mean In Photography?

•

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Transcript

Your photos are technically perfect — sharp, well-exposed — but they look weirdly orange. Or horribly blue. Here's the one setting that fixes it instantly.

You've done everything right. The exposure's spot on. The focus is sharp. You're happy with the composition. And then you look at the photo and think — why does everyone's skin look like they've been tangoed? Or why does this nice warm living room look like a hospital corridor? Or why do your sunset photos look grey and lifeless? Or why does that beautiful white building look vaguely green under the fluorescent street lights?

Welcome to the world of white balance. It's one of those things that nobody really explains to beginners, and that's a shame, because once you understand it — and it really doesn't take long — you'll stop wondering why your photos look a bit off and start knowing exactly what to do about it.

Here's why this matters so much. White balance is the foundation of accurate colour in your photos. Get it wrong, and every other adjustment you make in editing is working from a wonky starting point. Get it right, and suddenly your photos look like what you actually saw when you pressed the shutter. It's one of the most fundamental settings on your camera, right up there with exposure and focus. And unlike those two, which tend to get talked about endlessly, white balance often gets ignored.

That changes today. By the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly what white balance is, why it matters, and how to use it properly. Whether you're shooting with a brand new camera or the phone that's already in your pocket, this episode is for you.

Hello and welcome to episode 227 of the Photography Explained Podcast.

This episode is titled White Balance Explained: Why Your Photos Look Too Orange or Blue.

A very good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to you, wherever you are in the world. 🌍 I'm your host, Rick, hi 👋, and in each episode, I try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) ⏱️, without the irrelevant details. Yes, really. 💯

I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my splendid podcast. 📸 💝

Let's get into this.

In the last episode — episode 226 — we talked about why photos can be too dark, and that was all about exposure. Getting the right amount of light into your camera. Today we're going a step further, because even with perfect exposure, colours can still go completely wrong. And the reason is almost always white balance.

So here's what we're going to cover. I've got seven tips for you today — seven things that will help you understand white balance, use it properly, and rescue photos when it goes wrong.

But don't worry — if it has all gone wrong in the taking the photo bit, it can be fixed in the editing bit. Sure, we would like to get it right in the first place. OK, this is one time when I do leave something to fix later — more on why in a bit.

Let's do this.

Tip 1: What White Balance Actually Is — and Why It Matters

Right, let's start at the very beginning. What is white balance?

Here's the thing. Different light sources produce different colours of light. Sunlight at midday is quite blue and neutral. The warm glow of a lamp in your living room is very orange. A cloudy sky pushes things towards cold, bluish tones. Fluorescent office lighting goes a bit green. Your eyes and brain automatically adjust for all of this — you walk from outside into a room lit by lamps, and everything still looks normal to you. White things still look white.

Your camera doesn't do this automatically unless you tell it to. It records what's actually there — the raw colour temperature of the light. And if the camera gets it wrong, or you have it set incorrectly, the photo comes out with a colour cast. Too warm, too cool, too green.

White balance is the setting that tells your camera what kind of light you're in, so it can correct for that and produce photos where white things actually look white, and skin tones look like skin tones, and the world looks, well, like the world.

That's it. That's white balance. Simple enough, yes? Let's get into how you actually use it.

Tip 2: Why Your Indoor Photos Look Too Orange

This is one of the most common complaints I hear from beginners. "Why do my photos inside look so orange?"

The answer is almost always tungsten light. And yes, tungsten is the correct term, even if it sounds a bit old-fashioned. Tungsten is the name for traditional incandescent light bulbs — the ones with the glowing filament inside. They produce warm, orange-toned light. And even modern warm LED bulbs produce the same effect.

If your camera is set to Auto White Balance, it should correct for this. But Auto White Balance isn't perfect — sometimes it overcorrects, sometimes it undercorrects, and sometimes it just gets confused.

The fix? Either set your white balance to the Tungsten or Incandescent preset on your camera. It usually looks like a little light bulb icon. Or, if you're shooting RAW files, you can correct it in editing afterwards — I'll come back to that.

One thing worth knowing: sometimes that warm orange glow is actually lovely and atmospheric. A cosy evening scene lit by candles or lamps — you might actually want to keep some of that warmth. White balance isn't always about making things neutral. It's about making things look the way you want them to look.

Tip 3: Why Outdoor Photos Sometimes Look Too Blue or Too Cold

The flip side of the orange problem is the blue problem. You're shooting outside on an overcast day, and everything looks cold and a bit miserable. Or you're in the shade, and the photo has a distinctly chilly, blue cast to it.

This happens because open shade and overcast conditions produce light that's towards the blue end of the colour temperature scale. Your camera may not correct for it automatically, and the result is photos that look flat and cold.

The solution on your camera is the Cloudy or Shade white balance preset. The Cloudy setting warms things up slightly. The Shade setting warms them up even more, because shade is cooler than open cloud.

Interestingly, landscape photographers sometimes deliberately use the Cloudy setting even on sunny days, because it adds a touch of golden warmth to the image. It's a little trick that can make photos feel more inviting. How utterly splendid when you discover things like that.

Tip 4: How to Use Auto White Balance — and When to Trust It

Auto White Balance — usually labelled AWB on your camera — is the default setting on most cameras, and honestly, it's pretty good these days. For most situations, in decent light, outdoors, it'll do a perfectly acceptable job and you won't even need to think about it.

Here's when Auto White Balance works well: outdoor photography in natural light, daytime shooting, mixed and variable lighting conditions where you're moving around a lot.

Here's when it struggles: indoor photography under artificial lights, situations where the camera gets confused by large areas of strong colour, and mixed lighting where you've got both artificial and natural light in the same shot — like a room with lights on near a window.

My advice? Start with Auto White Balance. See how it goes. When you notice your photos consistently looking too warm or too cool in a particular situation, that's when you switch to a preset or set it manually. Don't overthink it.

Tip 5: How to Use White Balance Presets on Your Camera

Most cameras — from a basic entry-level DSLR to a professional mirrorless — have white balance presets. These are pre-programmed settings designed for common lighting situations. They're your quick fix when Auto White Balance isn't quite cutting it.

Here's a quick rundown of the main ones. Daylight or Sunny — for bright sunlight. This gives you a natural, neutral result in direct sun. Cloudy — for overcast conditions, adds warmth to counteract the cool light. Shade — for subjects in open shade, adds even more warmth. Tungsten or Incandescent — for indoor artificial lights, the classic orange bulb situation. Fluorescent — for offices or spaces with strip lighting, corrects for the greenish cast. Flash — matches the colour temperature of your built-in or external flash.

How to access these? On most cameras it's in the menu, or there may be a dedicated WB button on the body. Check your camera's quick start guide — remember episode 225 where I talked about actually reading that? This is exactly the kind of thing it'll tell you.

These presets are small but perfectly formed solutions to a very common problem.

Tip 6: How to Fix White Balance in Editing When You Shoot RAW

Here's a really important one. If you shoot in RAW format — and if you don't know what that is, don't worry, I'll do a whole episode on it — you can correct white balance perfectly in post-processing, after the fact. White balance is essentially metadata in a RAW file; it's not baked into the image. You can change it completely without any quality loss.

This is one of the biggest advantages of shooting RAW. You don't need to get white balance perfect in camera, because you can fix it afterwards.

With RAW files and the right editing software, you can apply the same presets you find in camera to the image after you have taken it. Yes, really. The Daylight preset, the Cloudy preset, the Tungsten preset — they're all there in Lightroom, ready to apply with a single click.

And there's more. In Lightroom, for example, there's a Temperature slider — drag it left for cooler, right for warmer. There's also a Tint slider for correcting green or magenta casts.

And you can also use the White Balance Selector tool, which is a little eyedropper — click on something in your image that should be neutral grey or white, and Lightroom works out the correct white balance from that.

If you shoot JPEGs, the white balance is baked into the file and harder to correct without losing quality. Another good reason to shoot RAW when you can. But even with JPEGs, a rough fix in editing is absolutely possible.

Tip 7: The Grey Card Trick — Your Secret Weapon for Perfect White Balance

Right, here's a professional trick that costs about five pounds and makes white balance correction ridiculously easy. Get yourself a grey card.

A grey card is exactly what it sounds like — a card that's perfectly neutral grey. Not quite white, not quite black, just neutral middle grey. You can buy one from any photography shop or online, and they're small, lightweight, and indestructible.

Here's how you use it. Before you start taking your actual photos in a particular location or lighting setup, take one quick test shot with the grey card in the frame. Just hold it up, make sure it's lit by the same light that's hitting your subject, and take the photo. Then put the card away and shoot normally.

Later, when you're editing in Lightroom or whatever software you use, you open that test shot with the grey card, grab the White Balance Selector tool — that eyedropper I mentioned earlier — and click on the grey card. Boom. Perfect white balance. Then you can copy that white balance setting and paste it onto all the other photos you took in that same lighting. Job done.

It sounds almost too simple, but it works brilliantly. Professional photographers use this technique all the time, especially in tricky mixed lighting situations or when colour accuracy really matters — product photography, for example.

The grey card gives your editing software a reference point — this is what neutral grey looks like in this light — and from that, it can work out the correct white balance for everything else in the scene.

Quick Recap

Right, let's bring that together quickly.

Tip 1 — White balance is what tells your camera what type of light you're shooting in, so colours look right. Tip 2 — Indoor photos going orange? That's tungsten light. Use the Tungsten preset or correct in editing. Tip 3 — Outdoor photos looking cold and blue? Switch to Cloudy or Shade preset. Tip 4 — Auto White Balance is great for most situations — start there and adjust when needed. Tip 5 — White balance presets are your quick fix for predictable lighting situations. Tip 6 — if you shoot RAW, you can fix white balance perfectly in post. Total freedom. And Tip 7 — use a grey card for perfect white balance every time. One test shot, click the card in editing, done.

What If I Use a Phone to Take My Photos?

Great news — everything in this episode applies to you too, dear phone photographers. Your phone handles white balance automatically, and modern phones are genuinely excellent at it. Most of the time you won't need to think about it at all.

But if your phone photos are looking too warm or too cool and you want to fix it, most camera apps let you manually adjust white balance. In the native iPhone camera, tap on the screen and you'll see a sun icon — swipe on that to adjust warmth. Android phones vary, but the Pro or Manual mode in most camera apps gives you a WB control.

Even better — if you shoot in RAW on your phone (which you can do in lots of third-party apps), you get the same post-processing freedom I described in Tip 6. Correct white balance perfectly in Lightroom Mobile. Brilliant.

And you can take photos using Lightroom Mobile and set the white balance before you take a photo. How utterly splendid.

What Do I Do?

Right, here's what I actually do in my professional work.

For my architectural and real estate photography, I shoot RAW every single time, and I leave white balance on Auto in camera. Why? Because I'm going to correct it in Lightroom anyway, and I'd rather focus on composition and exposure when I'm on location. I'll sort the colours out at the computer.

And Tip 7 — that simple grey card — I use that and click on it when I am processing, and 99 times out of 100, that is white balance nailed.

Interiors can be tricky. You often have a mix of daylight coming through the windows and warm artificial lights inside. No white balance setting can fix both at once — they're physically different colour temperatures. What I do is set white balance for the interior lights, because that's what fills most of the frame, and then I deal with the window areas separately in editing if needed.

For landscape photography, I sometimes use the Cloudy preset even in decent light, because I like that slightly warm, golden look. It's a creative choice, not a technical correction.

Here's Something for You to Do, Dear Listener

Here's your challenge. Tonight or tomorrow, find a room and turn the lights on in your home. Take three photos of the same scene — one with Auto White Balance, one with the Tungsten or Incandescent preset, and one with the Daylight preset. Then compare them.

You'll immediately see the difference white balance makes. The Tungsten preset should give you the most neutral result. The Daylight preset will look horribly orange. Auto should be somewhere in between.

This is a small exercise, takes five minutes, but it'll make white balance click in your brain in a way that no amount of explanation can. Let me know how you get on — I'd love to hear about it.

Related Episodes Worth Listening To

If this episode has sparked your curiosity about getting the technical side of your photos right, there are a few episodes in the back catalogue that are well worth your time.

In the last episode — episode 226 — we talked about why photos can be too dark, and that was all about exposure. Getting the right amount of light into your camera. Today we're going a step further, because even with perfect exposure, colours can still go completely wrong. And the reason is almost always white balance.

And if you haven't explored the exposure side of things in depth, Episode 4 — What Is The Exposure Triangle? is a great foundation episode, as is Episode 21 — What Does Exposure Mean In Photography?. They're all there in the back catalogue, waiting for you.

Next Episode 💝

In the next episode — episode 228 — we're tackling a question that a lot of you are probably quietly asking yourselves: How do I know if I'm ready to move from my phone to a proper camera? Because it's not just about money. It's about whether you actually need one, and whether you're ready to make the most of it. I think you're going to find that one really useful. See you in a fortnight.

Get in Touch & Subscribe! 🤝

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For everything else, visit RickMcEvoyPhotography.com 🌐 — ask questions, get my weekly email, get in touch, or text me directly from the podcast feed. 📱 Find me on YouTube by searching Rick McEvoy. 📺

Check out my courses page 🎓 for "How to Become a Real Estate Photographer." 🏠

And check out my resources page which takes you in all sorts of splendid directions.

This episode was brought to you by a cheese and pickle sandwich 🥪 and a Coke Zero 🥤, consumed before settling into my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording room. 🎙️

I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks very much for giving me 27-ish minutes of your valuable time. 🙏 This episode will be about 23 minutes after editing out the mistakes and bad stuff.

Thanks for listening. 👍

Stay safe. 🛡️ Cheers from me, Rick! 🍻