Why colour drifts
Over a long shoot the light changes, bulbs warm up, someone adjusts a setting, and different editors interpret “correct” differently. None of these are dramatic on their own, but across a catalogue the drift becomes obvious — and colour-related returns follow.
Shoot with a reference
Put a colour checker in the first frame of every lighting setup. It costs nothing and gives post-production an objective anchor rather than a guess. Shoot raw if you can; the latitude makes correction far cleaner.
Write the style guide down
A usable style guide states the white balance target, the shadow style, the background value, the crop ratio and the margin. Once it is written, any editor produces the same result — which is the whole point. Verbal instructions do not survive a team of ten.
Batch, then verify
Apply the correction per lighting setup rather than per image, then check a contact sheet of the whole batch at thumbnail size. Drift is obvious in a grid and invisible when you inspect one file at a time.
Physical samples matter
For anything where colour drives the purchase — paint, cosmetics, fabric — match against the physical product on a calibrated monitor, not against another photo. It is the only way to get it genuinely right.