A Complete Guide to Selecting Your Perfect Hair Color

Are you ready for a change? Or have you discovered a new hair color you’re dying to try? How about a touch-up of the current color? Sometimes, a fresh look can springboard your mind, body, and soul.

At Vivid Med Spa, our colorists are poised to go beyond simple dyeing and demonstrate how hair color, texture, and skin tone must all be factored into the shade selected. As a premier hair color service in Chandler, AZ, our pros have decades of combined experience making client hair goals a reality.

Recognizing Your Skin Undertone

No matter how similar, each individual has a slightly different skin complexion and tone than everyone else. Of course, it’s easy to see darker or lighter tones, but skin coloration goes much deeper than that. The hues of the skin come from deep in the dermal layers of our bodies.

Your skin undertone refers to a presiding tone of your skin which isn’t necessarily derivative of just a light or dark tone. Skin tones are divided into cool, warm, or neutral categories. Within these categories, skin coloration can range from light to dark, but other factors often exhibit the true undertone of a person’s skin.

Be In a Well-Lit Room

The first step to closely examining your skin is to position yourself in a well-lit room so you can examine your color, tone, texture, and complexion. Have a trusted friend or loved one give you their opinion, too. Sometimes a second opinion can shake up the preconceived notions you’ve already accepted.

Get a mirror up close to your skin, use a magnifying mirror, and look at your skin from different angles and even with different light. Assessing what you’re seeing also means letting your eyes adjust and taking in all the tones you see.

Examine Your Veins and Eyes

One of the better methods for determining your skin’s undertone is to examine your visible blood vessels and the color of your eyes. For the eyes, greens, and plies usually indicate cooler undertones, whereas browns, ambers, and golds tend to reveal warmer undertones.

For your blood vessels, check to see if the visible veins in your wrist or forearms are green or blue. Your undertones may be neutral if there isn’t a discernible difference from blue or green veins.

Test with Different T-Shirt Colors

Fabric colors can accentuate, clash, or blend with skin tones to create a reasonably good comparison and contrast. Trying on t-shirts with solid colors (no patterns or graphics) can help determine which colors work and which aren’t.

You can also use shirts you consider a favorite go-to or garner compliments to determine your skin undertone. Shirt colors that seem right with your skin and natural hair color can be a key to finding your natural hues. In most cases, if your favorites are greens or blues, you align with cool tones, whereas yellows, oranges, and browns match up with warm tones.

Test with Different Jewelry

Another potential test for skin undertones is to examine the jewelry you wear and assess how the different metals compare and contrast to your skin, like the shirt colors. Remember, many of us have been inadvertently dressing and designing around our undertones for years. Your style can speak volumes about what you and others have observed for quite a while, so take stock of your personal preferences.

Remember, too, to allow those trusted friends and family to help. Try on some silver jewelry and then some gold jewelry. As you might imagine, aligning or feeling complimentary with silver indicates a pull toward cooler tones, with gold leaning more toward warm tones.

Best Hair Colors For Warmer Skin Tones

Once you’ve identified the range in which your skin undertone resides, you can begin exploring color options that should be more complimentary than clash.

Warm skin tones can pair well with blondes with hints of rose or pink and beiges. These colors naturally bring out the warmth in a person’s undertones. Additionally, blondes can use lighter natural yellows or bluish-blondes as highlights or as an ombre-type fade.

Remember to consider your eye color, too. When possible, use color swatches or samples to refine your color choices.

For warm-toned brunettes, caramel, honey, and autumn wheat are all strong contenders for developing warmth. Pairing warm hair colors with warm undertones helps complexions to glow.

If you’re considering more daring rainbow colors and multi-hue hair designs, you’ll do best with warm pinks and oranges, autumn reds, oranges, and browns, and even light purples or pinkish-blue tones.

Best Hair Colors For Cooler Skin Tones

If you’ve determined you’re in the cooler skin undertones, such as hints of blue, pink, or a ruddy red complexion, you’ll want to compliment with cooler versions of the colors you’re considering. For instance, if your undertone is a more excellent brown, a similar cool brown, dark ash blonde, or even a cool platinum can be a great look for you. Cool undertones can also use traditionally dark tones, like black or cool blues, and even excellent greens, like aquamarine or silvery blues, for their palette.

Light skin with cool undertones, platinum blondes, silvers, cool purples and lavenders, and cool reds are excellent choices. Many cool and light undertones are currently favoring light grays, with hints of pink or blue as accents. Cobalt blues and deep ocean greens are potential styles to discuss with your hair professional(s).

These same parameters will apply to a rainbow or multi-hue color jobs. Look for cooler color tones to mix and match. The same goes for ombre looks, with the color combos remaining cool, even though the multi-tones may strongly contrast light and dark.

Best Hair Colors For Neutral Skin Tones

Neutral skin undertones can be both a blessing and a curse, as many different combinations and cool or warm tones can work. With neutral undertones, it may be more necessary to consult closely with a hair color specialist who can determine what colors, palettes, or shades will work best.

The flexibility to try different cool and warm tones opens up many possibilities, which means your style can also be a significant factor in determining the right hair colors. It may be best to compliment the wardrobe if you wear more blacks, silvers, or deep blues. The same goes for warm tones of clothing.

Neutral tones can potentially match with so many different colors and tone variances that it’s more of a personal preference for hair colors.

Can You Experiment Beyond the Rules?

It’s best to work within proven guidelines when determining hair color. There have been countless good and bad experiments that have helped guide and create many hair coloring rules or, at the least, solid recommendations for color combinations.

At the same time, experimentation is exactly how many coloring parameters were/are developed. Thinking creatively can lead to some amazing discoveries and classically recognized styles. It’s essential to keep this in mind when thinking about hair color.

Spend some time talking to your hair professional(s) about what you’re trying to achieve and looking over color palettes to find what styles you naturally gravitate towards. After all, you must like how it looks on you more than anybody else.

Go For a Style That Compliments Your Personality

Coloration should be an extension of your personality, so have fun with it. As we mentioned, consider your style and look for complementary styles, hues, tones, and colors to work with.

You can also consider making changes in conjunction with the seasons. Imagine changing hair colors to coincide with the desert flower season and moving from a cool silver with sky blue highlights in winter into a fantastic light blonde caramel for spring. Not only will you show off your style, but the rest of the world will be a complimentary color palette for your new colors.

Colors and Compliments

Updating hair color or designing a new look can become a refreshing experience that numerous clients regularly anticipate. Fresh and exciting hair colors can also provide a unique presentation for an individual’s face, just like the perfect frame around a favorite picture.

Our professionals have spent countless hours perfecting their techniques and specialties at Vivid Med Spa. Our hair color service in Chandler, AZ, as well as the greater Phoenix area, is excited to see what magic we can create together.

In addition to hair coloring, Vivid also offers a variety of laser treatments for hair removal, body contouring, and even tattoo removal. Vivid offers injectable treatments, such as Botox and fillers, traditional spa treatments, and other skin and beauty pampering procedures. Contact us today to see what exciting changes could be coming your way.