When was the last time you paid a lot of money at the salon for gorgeous color, came home, looked at yourself in the mirror in front of a different light, and realized: something is off about this color. Maybe you can’t put your finger on the problem — you asked for blonde or golden brown and that’s what the stylist gave you. But, over $100 spent later, and you’re sure of one thing: this new shade isn’t doing you any justice. It’s clashing with your skin tone and just looks plain wrong. It can be difficult for mere mortals who aren’t experts in hair color to figure out why certain shades make us glow and others make us look like we’ve been in bed with flu for days. That’s why we brought in two hair experts to help make sense of it all.
This hack helps you find the best hair color for your skin tone, once and for all.
Analyze Your Veins
It’s one of the oldest hair tone tricks in the book. Celebrity hairstylist and hair color guru Michael Canale stands by the vein testing method to determine what shade of color or highlights you should ask your stylist to create for you. “Let your own skin undertone guide you to pick your best hair color,” Canale says. “Look under your wrist to see if your veins are blue or green. If they’re blue, you’re a cooler undertone, and if they’re green, then you’re a warm tone. Cool tones should be Scandinavian, ash base, aka the white blondes. Warm tones would be a spring undertone, like a golden brown to a strawberry blonde.
Judging by your vein color, doing a reddish color on a cool undertone that doesn’t match your skin tone is definitely a shame, Canale says. “The worst thing you can do as a cool undertone would be to add warm tones into your color,” Canale says. “The wrong color will totally wash you out.”
Or Gaze Into Your Own Eyes
Perhaps you’ve tried the vein test and you always wind up unsure of whether your arm has more blue or green (and in fact some people do have both colors and are more neutral than cool or warm).
Natalie Sibert, senior stylist at Mirror Mirror, has a tip for that. “To determine your best hair color, look at your eyes,” Sibert says. “Your skin tone changes with the seasons and you should always adjust your makeup when you change your hair color, but your eye color is constant. The best color for your hair is a tone that will complement your eye color.”
By noticing the flecks of color in your own eyes you may be able to flawlessly pick out the best hair colors for you. “Have a little green in your eyes? Try warmer toned colors,” Sibert says. “If your eyes are more grey or blue, bring that out with cool toned highlights or a rich brown to create contrast and make your eye color pop! If your eyes are golden brown try a rich warm tone. If they’re a really dark brown/almost black you can pull off just about anything. Always look at the flecks of color in your eyes and go off of that.”
