Why one hair colour lights up your face and another dulls it
Having fair or dark skin says less than you'd think. What decides whether a colour lights up your face is the tone beneath your skin, and you can get a sense of it at home in daylight. What suits each one, and why someone else's photo won't work for you.
Fair or dark hardly matters
It's the first thing people ask us, and almost always like this: what colour suits me if I'm fair, or what colour suits me if I'm dark.
It's a trick question. Two equally pale people can need opposite colours, and exactly the same can happen to two people with dark skin.
How light or dark your skin is, that's its tone, and it tells you how much contrast your face can take. The colour family is decided by something else, the undertone, which is what lies underneath: cool if your skin leans pink or bluish, warm if it leans golden or peach, and neutral when it doesn't clearly lean either way.
That's nearly all there is to it.
How to get a sense of your undertone at home
Stand by a window during the day, with no make-up and your hair tied back or covered with a white towel. The colour you have now also reflects onto your face, and bathroom light plays tricks.
Look at the veins on your wrist. If they look bluish or purple, you lean cool; if they look greenish, warm. And if you couldn't say, your skin is probably neutral.
Then hold something silver and something gold up to your face. It's not about which one you like more. It's about which one makes your skin look clearer and more rested: silver tends to suit cool skin better, and gold, warm skin.
The same goes for a T-shirt in true white and another in off-white. Pure white suits a cool undertone. Off-white brings a warm one to life, even though next to the white it looks almost a little dirty.
None of the three is always right on its own. If two of them say the same thing, you've already got a good clue.
Watch out for olive skin, the kind that's neither pink nor golden and has a slightly greenish base, because it's very common around the Mediterranean and throws all three tests off: the veins are hard to make out, and gold and silver look much the same on it. It usually behaves like neutral skin.
Which colours suit each undertone
Cool skin suits cool or neutral colours: beige and ash blondes, cool browns like dark chocolate and, if your skin is very fair and your eyes are dark, even a very dark brown. What dulls it most are intense golds and coppers, which give it a yellowish cast or make redness stand out.
With warm skin it's the other way round. Honeys, caramels, golds and coppers brighten it. A very strong ash turns it greyish and makes you look tired.
Neutral skin has it easier.
It suits beiges, natural browns and almost anything that doesn't go to an extreme, neither too golden nor too ashy.
If you have redness on your face, that matters as much as your undertone: reds and coppers bring it out, and neutral or slightly cool shades play it down.
And then there are your eyes. Green or hazel eyes light up with caramels and soft coppers; blue and grey eyes stand out more with cool shades. When your skin can't decide, they settle it.
When a colour dulls your face
Almost always for one of two reasons. Too much contrast, or too little.
A colour much darker than your skin hardens your features. It acts as a frame, and everything inside it stands out more: dark circles, the shadows beside your nose, expression lines. It happens a lot with black.
One that's too light, or from the opposite family to your undertone, does the reverse. Your face loses its colour, looks washed out, and it seems as if you're not wearing make-up even when you are.
Over the years skin gradually loses pigment and the face loses contrast, so the dark brown that looked perfect on you at twenty-five can harden your features at fifty. Often it's enough to soften it by a shade or two, or to add a little light around your face.
Same with grey hair. White regrowth against a very dark dye shows within a few weeks, whereas with a slightly softer colour or fine highlights it blends in as it grows. We talk about how to cover it in the guide to ammonia-free hair colour.
Why someone else's photo won't work for you, and nor will a quiz on your phone
Online quizzes that ask your eye and hair colour sometimes get it right. What they can't do is see you.
Apps that put the colour on a photo of you are even less help. The screen, the lighting and the camera filter have already changed your skin before the app touches anything, and the colour it paints on is flat, whereas real hair has glints and each strand catches the light in its own way.
A photo of an actress or your friend comes with her skin, her eyes and her base colour. With a different undertone underneath, the same copper brown is a different colour. The same goes for the base colour, as we explain in the guide to blonde highlights on brown hair.
They're useful for ruling things out. For choosing, not so much.
What we look at before choosing
Before mixing anything, we look at your skin in good light, your eyes, your eyebrows and the hair underneath: your base colour, the colour you have on now, and how much grey there is and where.
If you have a photo in mind, bring it along. It tells us what you like, and often we can get to something with the same feel within your colour family.
If you live far away, or what you want is to go over cut and colour in one go, we also do it by video call. It's the image configuration, and you come away with the exact name of each shade so you can ask for it at any salon.
And if the colour you have in mind is going to dull your face, we'll tell you before we open the tube.
