How to Choose Your Most Flattering Hair Colour
Hair colour can be an endless journey. Finding a colour that you like and that flatters you isn’t always as easy as you’d like.
So today, I want to share three options for finding a hair colour that’s right for you: go natural, replicate your natural colour, or choose a colour that works for your tone.
For the last one, you’ll need to have had your Personal Colour Analysis so that you know which of the 12 tones is yours. Once you know that, it’s much, much easier to narrow down the options and find a colour that suits you.
Photo by Christopher Campbell
1. Go (or stay) natural
Your natural hair colour is something special. (Yes, even if you have grey hair.)
It is perfectly harmonious with you.
It takes no effort or money to maintain.
It is subtle, nuanced and intricate. It has highlights and lowlights and variation.
It has transparency, which makes it change or even glow in different light.
If your natural hair colour looks dull or boring to you, a couple of things may be happening...
If you haven’t seen yourself in your own colours, you may not be seeing your hair colour as it actually is.
If you’re a Soft Summer and you wear black, your hair will look flat, with no variation, and likely darker than it actually is. Put on your own soft colours, and suddenly it will have highlights and dimension. (I see this all the time on my Soft Summer son.)
Or, you may be used to the look of intense hair colour, and it can take some adjustment to see what a more subtle hair colour does for you.
Your hair needs to frame your face. Your face is where you are. It’s where I can connect with you, understand you, like you, trust you.
If your hair is stronger or brighter than your face is, it will take over and diminish your face. It will make it harder for other people to see you.
Photo by Olly Joy
2. Replicate your natural colour
If you want to cover grey, asking a good hair colourist to replicate your natural (non-grey) colour is a perfect option.
If you are mostly or all grey, you may want to go for a colour like the one you had, but a tad lighter. This is because you are lightening (silvering) and so your natural lightness has changed.
The trick is finding a colourist who can do this well, because it seems to be fairly difficult to achieve. If you find one, keep her (or him)!
Photo by Hannah Morgan
3. Choose a harmonious colour for your tone
There are so many possible hair colours to choose from, trying them all to see which works would take a lifetime. But knowing your tone will help to narrow them down dramatically.
How to choose a harmonious colour?
Firstly, try not to stray too far from your natural value (lightness) level. Colouring your hair black if you’re naturally blonde, or vice versa, will have detrimental effects on your appearance.
Secondly, choose a hair colour that works with your tone. So choose a clear (not muddy) colour if you are a bright tone, and a dusty colour if you are a soft tone. If you are cool, choose cool versions of hair colours, with violet, blue or mahogany undertones. If you are warm, look for golden, copper, or honey undertones.
Ideally, talk to your Personal Colour Analyst to find the hair colour(s) that will work best for you. But to give you some options, I’ve collected colour ideas for each of the 12 tones in the Pinterest boards below.
These are not comprehensive — not every colour that could work for each tone is here, and I’ll be adding more over time.
If your natural colour is not shown here in your tone, that doesn’t mean that your natural colour is wrong for you. I can’t emphasise this enough. Natural hair colour is a different beast altogether. Your body knows better than I do.
Ok, on to the hair colours...
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Please keep in mind that screens render colour differently (sometimes radically differently), so while these images look harmonious with their respective tones on my screen, they may not on yours. Always use your fan as your guide.
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