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Your most flattering hair color is very likely not the one nature gave you but one waiting in a bottle, ready to be released like a good genie to spread its colorful magic through your hair. And even though Mother Nature may have given you dishwater hair and pale lips, she also gave you an undefeatable spirit.

Unless you are a member of a distinct minority you probably began experimenting with lipstick soon after you emerged from the cradle and then before you new it you were dabbling in haircolor.

Pick a color, any color, and it can be yours. It can look so natural even your hairstylist won't know.

Today's woman is talked about not when she takes to the color bottle but when she doesn't and allows her hair to go dull and drab.

Ask any leading hair stylist and he will answer: "A woman should do what is most becoming. If her face is youthful, she can let her hair go gray, if she cares to. But how many women with gray hair have youthful faces?"

"Nearly all women look younger with color. Usually haircolor in the original shade is preferable. However, vivid contrasts and daring colors can be extremely chic on women whose personalities are geared to experiment with latest trends."

Why are so many women deciding to be no longer just a shade away from hair beauty?

Science has evolved not only natural looking colors but faster methods of application. Color can be added in the privacy of your kitchen or in a grand salon.

Color not only brightens a woman's hair, it brightens her life. It improves her silhouette, camouflages faulty features, makes eyes look brighter, complexion clearer and adds body to troublesome baby fine hair.

After years of curiosity, balanced by inertia or indecision, you've decided to cast your hair upon the coloring basin.

Comparatively simple, safe and speedy as the process is today to become a blonde, brunette, or redhead by formula rather than by nature requires patience, time, money and the right natural coloring.

While young girls can wear almost any color, older women must be decidedly more careful. After about thirty five, women who insist on trying to recapture the hair shade of their youth are actually defeating their own purposes.

Cling to the same color yes, but cling to it several shades lighter. Take your cue from nature, which lightens hair when complexions fade to make a more flattering frame for mature features. Strive for softer blondes, pinkish reds and lighter browns as you near forty.

Establishing any hard and fast rules of hair color are almost impossible, colorists agree. Complexions are constant variables. These few principles do seem to apply generally:

• Women with pale, light, nearly white skins can wear a wide range of colors successfully, especially the dramatic colors: pastel blondes, bright reds, chestnuts and blacks.

• Creamier skins may also add copper and auburn to their repertoire.

• Women with pink and white skins can use all the colors their whiter skinned sisters use. They look well in black, especially if their eyes are blue, light or dark auburn and all shades of brown.

• Women with sallow or olive skin should avoid ashen or silver tones. These shades make them appear gray all over. So should older women. A soft honey or beige tone is more flattering.

• Sallow skinned or older women should also avoid reddish gold tones.

Before You Take The Colorful Step

Get your hair in tip top condition with moisturizing and or repair treatments.

Snip a lock of hair from the back of your head, for a record of your exact natural color.

If you perm your hair too do it at least one week, preferably two, before you schedule your color. Two chemical treatments too closely placed can weaken hair. A permanent also tends to discolor colored hair and sometimes leaves hair so porous it absorbs too much color.

It’s wise to approach your new color step by step, as slowly as possible, unless, of course you’re contemplating a switch from auburn to violet, in which that’s the fast lane, not the slow road.

Understanding Types of HairColor

Permanent, not so permanent, temporary, not quite temporary, long lasting temporary…There are so many types of haircoloring on the market you may not know where to start.

If you are merely flirting with color, start with temporaries. Try one shade and if you don't like that, try another and no harm done. If all you are really seeking is new life for drab hair, temporary colors may be all you need to make hair look fresher, younger, brighter.

On your hair today and gone tomorrow, temporaries come in several forms and degrees of stability. But no matter how they come out of the bottle or aerosol  container, they all color hair by coating rather than penetrating the hair shaft. Then they all wash out with the next shampoo.

Color Enhancing Shampoos

Depositing the least amount of color of all temporaries, they are best used to enhance hair of the same color as the shampoo.

 

Color Rinses

Available in a beautiful rainbow of colors, they intensify natural color, add highlights, wash away dulling soap film, and blend in (not to be confused with covering) gray.

 

White, silver and steel rinses remove yellow from gray hair, while ash or platinum rinses drab brassy blonde tones. Pastel rinses double as colors for blonde or pre-lightened hair.

 

Rinses can intensify natural hair color, but they cannot lighten it. Rinses can do nothing for hair darker than the rinse shade except add highlights. You can apply a red rinse on blonde hair, a black rinse on brown hair, a brown rinse on red hair, but you cannot go from brown to blonde with a temporary rinse.

 

Natural shades are used for reviving faded, sun bleached or permanent stained hair. Light pastel rinses ranging from cloud white to lilac, with beiges in between, are applied over bleached or pale hair for soda fountain confection effects. As these colors wash off after a shampoo, it is possible to be a different color blonde every week.

 

Apply color rinses to hair that has been freshly shampooed with a mild product.

 

The trick is not to let porous areas grab color too quickly. Sun bleached crowns and permed ends, as well as hair that has been bleached or colored or washed with a strong shampoo, are more apt to be porous.

 

Apply color first to roots, which are less apt to be porous, then wait until just before you are ready to rinse before combing the color through the entire head of hair.

 

Demi Permanent HairColor

Longer lasting rinses are the halfway houses on the road between temporary and permanent color.

 

Shampooed through the hair and then allowed to remain until the desired shade is reached, they impart more color than temporary rinses by gently penetrating the hair shaft without the aid of a developer like peroxide.

 

They last through three to eight shampoos, depending upon the brand used, do a better job of covering gray than rinses, and are formulated not to rub off on pillows. Unlike colors and bleaches they leave no telltale lines of demarcation as they make their graceful exit.

 

HairColor Shampoo

When the mirror on the wall says this is the best color of all, there is still another border town before permanent color, the color shampoo. Mix equal parts of shampoo, peroxide and color. Choose color in a gold shade if your hair is light brown, red gold if your hair is brown or reddish, ash if it's a pale tone.

 

Permanent HairColor

A permanent color lasts until hair grows out. It cannot be shampooed out of hair, although a little bit does go down the drain with each washing. There are two type of permanent colors… tints and lighteners, once less euphemistically called bleaches.

 

Highlighting

An inspired idea for the woman who doesn't want to go all the way to a lightener shade. Wide, swashbuckling streaks are usually most becoming on younger women. Spicy, allover frosting of tiny strands does the most for more mature women.

Understanding How to Choose the Correct Color

Anyone can follow the directions contained in a store bought box of haircolor but knowing how a product works will help you achieve the best color for you.

Having a basic understanding of haircoloring and hair color will help you determine which color, tone and level best suits you.

First, let me clarify the difference between…

Haircolor

Refers to products and services

Hair Color

Is the color of your hair

Determine the Tone and Level of Your Natural and Desired Color

Describes the warmth or coolness of a color

Note:

Using a haircolor that compliments your natural skin tone, will give you the most natural hair color result. Determining your tone will also help you choose which shades of make up and color of clothes look best on you too.

What tone are you?

There are two easy ways to determine your tone:

1. Take a close look at your eye color

• If your eyes contain red, orange, yellow or gold flecks through the iris, your tone is WARM.

• If your eyes contain black, gray/brown, gray/green, blue, violet, grey or white fleck through the iris, your tone is COOL.

 2. Look at the palm of your hand. What color do you see?

• Gray, green or yellow your tone is cool or neutral. Warm colors aren’t recommended however, if you’d like to wear a warm color it should be a "dark" warm)

• Red, red/brown or blue/red your tone is cool or neutral.

• Gold/brown, gold or peach your tone is warm.

• A combination of pink and yellow you have neutral tone.

Warm - Think of fall, deep and rich.

Cool - Think of spring, light and pastel.

Lightness or darkness of hair color

Why is it important to know your level?

Most manufacturers use this number system now. If you’re familiar with what level you are, it makes deciding which color to choose much easier.

The HSM subscription contains even more information!