Your perfect hair colour isn’t a whim or a trend. The shade that’ll make your skin glow and your eyes brighter is based in colour theory, chemistry and science. It’s an interesting alchemy that’s often overlooked, the effect of your hair colour on your complexion. But believe it or not, the right colour can brighten your face, even out skin tone, and make it look as if you’re bathed in candlelight (rather than harsh fluorescent light).
Switching up your hair colour is never as simple as pointing at a picture in a magazine and thinking, “I want that!”
Either we’ve heard enough horror stories from friends, or worse, been a reality of our own, to know this.
In fact, it’s less about the hair colour you like and more about what hair colour your skin likes. The perfect hair colour will not only complement your skin tone and highlight your best facial features, it can also help you look years younger. Get it wrong and you could end up looking washed out, tired, unnatural and older! This is a little known fact, even though 55 percent of women colour their hair these days. “The biggest rule of thumb is that your natural hair colour is the shade range that you should stay within, go too far outside of it and you’re likely to wind up with hair that is not only damaged and dull, but fake looking against your skin tone. Why? Because though they may be completely different colours at first glance, your skin and natural hair colour have the same underlying pigments.
Hair Color Pigmentation
When you change your hair colour with permanent tint, it reveals the natural underlying pigments in the hair. So for the longest-lasting and most natural-looking colour, think about the colour that the sun turns your hair during mid-summer months. Those tones are what come naturally and what you should guide you when you colour your hair.
Skin Undertones and Hair Colour
Your skin tone also contains these underlying pigments. If you were born with black or brown hair, you will likely have warmer, earthy undertones in your skin like orange, brown, gold or orange-based red. If you were born with blonde hair, you probably have cooler skin undertones like blue, green, pink or blue-based red.
Those with warmer undertones in their skin will look better with a warmer hair colour, like golden blondes or honey browns. Conversely, those with cooler undertones in their skin will look better with cooler hair colours, like ash blonde, black or auburn brown.
Generally the makeup you are using can help you to tell if you are a warm or cool-toned person, as well as the jewellery you wear, gold (warm), silver (cool).
Eye Colour and Hair Colour
The colour of the eyes is another indicator. If your eyes are deep brown, black-brown, grey blue, dark blue or hazel with white, grey or blue flecks you look best with cool tones in your hair. However, if your eyes are golden brown, green, turquoise or hazel with gold or brown flecks you will look best with warm tones in your hair.
Age and Hair Colour
Your age is another important factor that indicates how far from the natural-born hair colour you should go because softer colours look better as we age. Yet, extremes (platinum blonde or black hair colour) tend to bring out the imperfections and wrinkles in the skin, so save those for your younger years.
Be aware that your skin tone changes as you age.
What’s growing out of your head naturally today may be different than what you had when you were a teenager, so just remember to stay within two levels of lightness or darkness of your current natural colour. That prevents mistakes from happening and keeps you looking the most natural.
But if you want something bold, you can make extreme colour changes more smoothly if you keep within the correct warm or cool tones.
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