Choosing a Hair Color to Match Your Skin Tone

By: Aysha Schurman

Any hair color specialist worth their salt will tell you that the best results come from a choosing a hair color that matches your skin tone. Warm, cool, dark or tinted with yellow, everyone requires slightly different hair colors. Thick, thin, dry or oily, everyone also requires different hair color products.

Professional hair color is always the best way to go, if you have the option. A hair color specialist can tell you the correct color, highlights and lowlights that would look best on you. This avoids the blanket color some people get, where every strand is uniform in hue and looks very odd.

Warm
Warm skin tones tend to have the natural hair colors red, auburn and golden blonde with dark skin tones. They can stray into black, but tend to contain brown undertones. Warm skin tones should stick with dark and rich hair colors with woody hues, such as mahogany, chestnut and cinnamon. You can also go with a very deep and rich blonde color, such as auburn or golden blonde.

Cool
Cool skin tones tend to have the natural hair colors bluish-black, brown and ash blonde with pale skin tones. Cool skin tones should stick with lighter colors with red hues, such as burgundy, strawberry blonde, honey blonde, blonde, auburn or sandy red. The darker colors add warmth to your tone, especially if you mix in a little red.

Dark
Dark skin tones tend to have the natural hair colors black or brown with darker versions of cool or warm skin tones. Dark skin tones can pick from both the warm and cool color categories, but should stay away from the lighter shades. Stick with darker hues and highlights to prevent over emphasizing any flaws in your skin texture.

Yellow
Yellow skin tones tend to have the natural hair colors black, brown or red with a little from either the cool or warm skin tone categories. Yellow skin tones must stay away from any yellow mixed hair colors, such as blonde or auburn. Stick with dark reds, natural black and medium to dark browns. Warm skin tone rules should apply more than cool ones.

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