Warm or Cool with Choosing a Hair Color

What are the factors when choosing a color?

Time was when your hair color choices were blonde, red, brunette, and black, but those days are long gone! Each basic hair color comes in a full array of choices from platinum blonde to jet-black. Moreover, the modern consumer must choose from non-traditional hair colors that range from hot pink to chartreuse. However, the wrong hair color choice can give you the blues or red in the face!

Hair Color Choices

The best method in choosing a hair color is first to choose the results you want from it states Layton Hair Salon. Depending on whether you are covering gray, highlighting a natural hair color, or using hair color to completely change your image, knowing what you want helps you to narrow down hair coloring choices.

Before you get down to choosing a hair color, first decide on your commitment to hair coloring. Temporary hair colors wash out in a shampoo or two, semi-permanent products typically last for a couple of months, while permanent dyes may either give you grow-out pains or necessitate frequent root touch ups.

Hair Color Tips:

1. Highlighting is a great way to add tone to monochromatic hair (jet black, pure brown).
2. Beware of hair colors that have green, blue, or purple undertones, like “ash”. If you mix them with warm tones, your hair color will turn out green.
3. The levels (one to twelve) you see on hair coloring boxes are the lightness or darkness of the color. Level one is black (darkest) and level twelve is light blond.
4. “Complimentary colors” are opposite each other on the color wheel. Blue-orange, violet-yellow, etc. If you want to neutralize unwanted highlights, choose the complementary color. For instance, red will cancel out an ash undertone, and an ashen color neutralizes any red highlights in your hair.
5. Be sure to check if your hair color is a “progressive dye”. Progressive dyes continually add more color with each use. For instance, if you’re coloring blond hair black, your first use of a progressive hair color may not give the result you expected. However, continued use will turn your hair jet black.
6. Hair colors, like perms, are chemically based so if you’re pregnant, be sure to check with your doctor before coloring your hair.
7. Henna hair dyes are organic based hair colors that don’t mix well with chemicals.
8. Stay out of the pool and the ocean after coloring your hair. Neither sea salt nor chlorine mixes well with chemical hair colors.

Choosing a Compatible Hair Color

After you’ve decided on results and made your commitment, it’s time to get out the color wheel. Beauty experts like Layton Hair Salon tell us that we’re either “cool” or “warm” depending on our skin tone, eye color, and natural hair color.

Cool Category

1. Eyes: Dark Brown, Black-Brown, Gray Blue, Dark Blue, or Hazel with white gray or blue flecks
2. Hair: Blue black, Deep brown, Ash brown, Ash Blond, Platinum Blond
3. Skin: Very dark brown, True olive, Medium pale, Medium with golden undertones, Pale, Bronze

Warm Category

1. Eyes: Golden brown, Green, Green-Blue, Turquoise, Hazel with gold or brown flecks
2. Hair: Deep brown with gold or red highlights, Red, Strawberry Blond, Gray-Yellow, Natural Golden Blond
3. Skin: Brown with pink or golden undertones, Peachy or with peachy undertones, Pale with gold undertones, Freckled, Ruddy(reddish- rosy crimson)

Examine Your Wardrobe

Cool hues are green, blue, and violet. Warm hues are reds, oranges, and yellows. Chances are, your wardrobe is a mix with either cool or warm hues in the majority. Clothing colors that look good on you and make you feel comfortable probably indicate if you’re in the cool or warm category. For instance, if olive drab makes you fade into the woodwork, then cool tones like ash blonde (ash tones contain green) are probably not for you.

Natural Curls and Waves

Experts generally advise against using permanent hair color on naturally curly or wavy hair. Any type of chemical treatment can impact natural curly or wavy hair. If your hair is already dry because of straightening or relaxing, the addition of more chemicals can result in worse damage. In addition, semi-permanent colors give you richer color that won’t fade like permanent color does.

Gray Hair

Hair turns gray or white when the hair shafts lose pigment. These shafts tend to be coarser and less porous, making it more difficult to set hair color. Before coloring, soften gray hair with a special softening shampoo or developer at Layton Hair Salon.

Hair Coloring Forecasts

Expert beauty consultants predict that the trend in hair colors is moving away from dramatic color and back towards more natural colors and highlighting techniques. Yet, not everyone wants to blend into the crowd. Make your personality your first consideration in choosing a hair color or hair coloring technique that’s a perfect fit for you.

• Are you sweet or saucy?
• Do you like to stay “in style” with the season or are you a rebel?
• Are you after the avant-garde or do you prefer traditional hair colors and techniques?
• Are you comfortable in the spotlight or would you rather sit in the audience?
• What hair color or technique really catches your eye and do you want to be caught up in it?

Sweet and Saucy

Highlight straight dark hair with a top layer of light-colored curls or curls in untraditional colors. Reverse the colors for a bolder, saucier look.

Seasonal Hair Color Changes

Fall and spring seem to be the most frequent times for hair color changes. In the autumn, we often make a change in hair color or style to forestall the winter doldrums. Then, the very freshness of spring encourages us to recreate a new image for ourselves.

Although we like to blame the sun for fading hair colors, as well as summer sun-fade, hard water and harsh hair care products can dull hair color over fall and winter. Spring is a great time to highlight hair with low-lights. Low-lights darken sections of your hair and make natural hair highlights sparkle in the summer sun.

Keeping Hair Color in Character

If you’re wearing a helmet, put some kick into your simple do with hair color spice that compliments your skin tone and brings out the best in your facial features. Foiling with three or four tones adds dimension to simple hairstyles. Blend a rich color like eggplant, burgundy, or bright red with lighter hair coloring highlights to effect a dramatic change without being overly emotive.

Hair Color in the Spotlight

One-tone hair colors are making a comeback. When you want to make a striking change, consider coloring your hair jet black, going platinum, becoming a real redhead, or really going for the gold, bronze, silver, blue etc.

If you’re not ready to plunge whole head into color, add a flash of color up front with bold colored bangs or make your personal color statement with just a tone or two to give your hair a hint of extraordinary color say Layton Hair Salon. Deeper colors add sizzle to dark hair and blonde colors, from ash to honey, add fire to lighter colored hair. Whatever hair color trends catch your eye, the diversity in modern hair colors and hair coloring techniques leave you with plenty of hair color ideas to shape your hairstyle and your image.

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