Your hair is a key element in your nonverbal message about yourself. It is worth making the time and investment to get the color and style just right for you. Over 75% of women color their hair and selecting the right color can be challenging even when you have a trusted stylist to help you.
Finding a hair color that looks good on you is not as simple as selecting a swatch off of a sample chart. Finding the best choices will be based on an analysis of your natural hair color (the color your hair was when you were 12), eye color and skin tone.
If you have warm skin undertones:
- Ivory, peachy, golden brown, creamy beige, cafe au lait, tawny, coppery, deep golden brown
- and your eyes are blue, blue-green hazel, green, topaz, amber or coffeebean
- your best haircolor choices are golden with red highlights, golden brown, honey brown, chestnut, copper and mahogany.
If you have cool skin undertones, (blue-red):
- rosy pink, rosy beige, dark olive, dark brown or ebony tones
- and your eyes are light blue, gray-blue, deep blue, deep green, brown or black
- your best hair color options are plum and burgundy highlights, ash and platinum blonde, brown, dark brown, black, slate, salt and pepper and pure white.
Once you’ve got the color selected getting the right shade is the next step:
Hair color is assigned a level number from 1 to 10, with 10 being the lightest and 1 being black. Black reflects very little light and the lightest shades of blonde reflect the greatest amount of light. A colorist would say that a level 10 brunette is two steps lighter than a level 8 brunette. A shade too dark or too light can have unintended consequences.
The advice above is great if you are all warm or all cool in your coloring. But we are often a mixture of some warm and some cool tones. In that case, the skin wins out. Your new chosen hair color needs to make your skin look good–see what happens to me in the following examples.
Experiment:
It is fun to try out some of the online color tools before you change your haircolor. I spent an afternoon playing with the MATRIX makeover tool.
- My natural hair color (when I was twelve) is dark brown.
- My eye color is hazel ( dark green and cool brown). I have amber highlights but I ignore them for this experiment because they are too warm for my skin.
- My skin color is light with cool undertones.
Uploaded photo before color selections. My hair looks charcoal in the picture, not the dark brown of my childhood. Why is that? My hair was dark brown as a child but the dark brown pigment in my hair has died out. Popular advice is to go back to the hair color you were as a child but let’s see if that looks good on me.
Yes, this was the color of my hair when I was twelve. Now it looks too light brown on me.It feels fake. I cannot go back to my childhood color because my skin has cooled down since then. I am no longer sporting a tan and the older one gets the thinner the skin and the cooler you look. What’s next?
So how about red highlights. Cooler skin and red highlights really limit the colors I can wear. Because cool red (my skin) and warm red in hair color, really do not mix well. If I chose this I can wear green, blue-green, a rosy-brown, but not much else. I can no longer wear my charcoals, darker purples, cool reds, and silver jewelry.
And how about the cool red? Boy, that got dark fast! I think it looks harsh on me and I look older. It’s nice that it is only a virtual red and I can hit undo!
This Website has fun tools, but after playing with it I’m happy to stay with my natural color. Although my hair color was brown when younger, I am growing into my dark charcoal gray that is getting threads of silver. (Lot’s of threads!) So I added silver in my jewelry and adapted my wardrobe to harmonize with my natural color, gray and all.
The bottom line is that hair color choices are difficult.
If you are in a position where you have to look younger for a job or your self-esteem needs a boost and you think covering the grey is the way to go, here’s my advice:
Invest in quality hair color.
Experiment on a website with virtual color tools, but go to a professional to at least get started. It takes time, money and dedication to have beautifully colored hair so decide in advance that you are making a commitment to keep it up. Set up a schedule to keep your hair evenly dyed all year round. (No skunk stripes). And be sure to protect your hair from the sun. Sun exposure will oxidize the color quickly making your color look brassy and too warm if you don’t protect it from the UV rays.
Many of my clients have done hair color for years and years. And then at one point, it is just too hard for them; for health, for finances, for time, their hairdresser left them, whatever it was, it became time to see what their natural color looks like.
For women who want to transition to gray, adding semi-permanent color glazes can ease the transition. The color glaze adds pigment to your natural colored strands and lets the gray perform as the highlights.
Another strategy is to add lowlights to your hair. Creating slender slivers of dark hair color between your natural color lets your silver become the highlights while preventing the harsh dye line.
And then there are some women that will never go gray.
- The Winter seasonal type with dark hair is one example. They will color until the day they die or the day they have enough white hair that they are willing to let it go. If it is in-between, it becomes a dirty grey, so forget it!
- Natural redheads with warm undertones are another example. Grey hair and warm skin is very difficult to pull off. If they do not have help with their wardrobe colors to shift everything to a cooler palette, they will keep on dying their hair.
A change in your hair color requires adjustments to what you wear. As I said before, “Your hair is a key element in your nonverbal message about yourself. It is worth making the time and investment to get the color and style just right for you.”
- You can choose to go “natural” and go gray/white, but make sure the cut is perfect and modern.
- Add some silver highlights to your accessories to match the silver in your hair.
- You can choose a hair color that complements your warm or cool undertones. This will harmonize well and help you look natural and in harmony with yourself.
- You can break with what you are doing and try something different. Something real-different. If you want to make a statement; now is your time. If rainbow streaks are what you’ve always wanted….go for it!
- Know in advance that half your wardrobe will not work with your new color.
Just wear the colors that work if you want to fit in–or wear colors that challenge if you want to send a message that you are artistic and just don’t care about approval from others.
If you would like to make an investment to get your color and style just right for you contact me and let’s talk about the nonverbal message you want to send about yourself through your wardrobe.