Hair color; it’s a conundrum. To embrace grey or not, to enter (and remain on) that hair dye treadmill or not, to choose a single color for life or to embrace every hair trend from lowlights to balayage?
And when you factor in colorful clothes, those questions multiply - suddenly there feels like much more to think about, harmonise, and match! But don’t give in to temptation to sink back into those ‘safe’ neutrals (and as you’ll learn when you begin to explore the world of color, even choosing the right neutrals can put a new spring in your step!).
Instead, why not discover the answers to every question you’ve ever had about how hair color relates the colors you wear, and whether that changes when your hair color does?
Whether your questions are about going grey, coloring your hair, matching your hair to your color palette (or vice versa), or how to wear color that harmonises with your hair,we’ve answered them all here so you can get back to the important work of wearing color with confidence, joy knowing that you look as fabulous as you feel!
We answer the four most common questions about grey hair and seasonal color analysis.
How Does My Hair Color Affect My Seasonal Color Palette?
Put simply, each of us has a palette of colors that belongs to us. Your own palette is made up of colors that reflect the natural level of warmth, vibrancy and contrast that you carry, and when you wear it (either as clothes, make or, yes, hair color!) will make you feel more alive, put together, and confident, and that, as an extra bonus, mix and match endlessly to make beautiful outfits, giving you a harder working wardrobe and all but eliminating mistake purchases.
Here at Kettlewell, to help you find the right colors for you, we divide colors up into four distinct palettes, each one named after a season.
The group of colors that belongs to you - which will be named after one of the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter - is defined by your natural coloring. This means not only your skintone, but also your eye color, lip color and, you guessed it, natural hair color.
Whenever you add additional colors to your natural look, either through the act of wearing clothes or through adding color with make up or hair dye, this has an impact on that natural harmony in one of two ways:
- It enhances it. Your eyes become brighter, your skin glows and, most importantly you feel better, wearing clothes that naturally belong to you and enhancing everything that makes you you.
- It detracts from it. Your skin looks pale, flushed or sallow, your eye color appears less bright, and you feel flat, underwhelmed and invisible.
Remember, your hair will naturally always harmonise with your palette (we’ll discuss the impact going grey might have further through this article), but let’s consider for a moment the impact of dyeing your hair, whether that’s to cover grey or not.
Does Changing My Hair color Affect My Seasonal Palette?
The short answer is that your palette is your palette. Changing your hair color won’t alter everything else about you - skin tone, eyes, brows, lips etc - so your overall palette will remain the same. However, that new hair color might throw an additional color into the mix that you now need to consider when choosing which colors to wear on your body.
So what does that actually mean? The first step is obviously to discover which seasonal palette belongs to you. If you don’t know this, now might be a good moment to head over to our clever Color Quiz and discover your palette, then come back here to discover the hair colors that will work for you. A good colorist will work with your natural coloring anyway, but having some language to communicate with them about the best colors for you can ensure that you are all on the same page when it comes to the task of coloring your hair.
Spring Hair colors
Opt for warm tones, filled with lightness and radiance. Sunkissed, golden, honey, caramel and champagne colors are often excellent, and browns stay warm and golden feeling, never too dark. Strawberry blonde and red can also work well. Greys stay warm, more like pale gold than anything remotely blue.
Summer Hair colors
Choose cool tones, with tonal blends of color - highlights, balayage and other techniques for layering color all work really well. Ash brown, icy blonde, mushroom tones, and even inky bluish tints to grey can work well. The key is to avoid anything brassy, although interestingly a red color can sometimes work - never go too warm with this, instead opting for tints of burgundy or cherry. Grey is always cool, from steel grey through to white, and can be supported with dye or simply a shampoo designed to eliminate blonde or brassy tones.
Autumn Hair colors
Your best colors are warm tones, filled with depth and layers of color. Again, balayage and deep lowlights can be really effective to get that feeling of layered up colors. Chocolate, deep caramel and toffee, rich auburn reds and deep blonde tones all work, but try to avoid going too light or insipid feeling with colors. Grey is usually naturally warm, and it’s usually best to embrace and even enhance this rather than trying to cool things down with blue tones.
Winter Hair colors
Choose cool tones, with a clear, definite look - no layers of gently textured highlights here, but rather block color or definite ‘slices’ of color through the hair, rather than tiny slivers of several shades. Think clear, crisp and defined when it comes to colors. Extremes like darkest brown or black, or ash blonde through to icy peroxide, can work well, but don’t feel the need to change mid-tone hair if that’s where you naturally sit. Grey is steel through to crisp blue-toned white.
What If My Hair color Does Not Harmonise With My color Palette?
There might be times when, intentionally or otherwise, your hair simply doesn’t harmonise with your seasonal palette. Maybe you or your hairdresser chose a slightly different tone to usual, maybe you simply fancied a change, maybe the sun or your shampoo has shifted the tone of your hair and pulled it ‘out’ of your palette. What happens then?
The key here is to remember that every other aspect of your coloring - your skintone, eyes and lips - still sit within your palette, it’s only your hair that will be altered when you color it. So, the core components of your coloring haven’t changed; it’s simply that we’ve introduced an additional shade that needs to be allowed when choosing colors for outfits, to ensure you still feel like the true version of you.
Shifting the colors you choose might be as simple as, say, playing up different tones within your palette to harmonise with your new hair color without sacrificing your best colors. For instance, if you’re a Spring who usually opts for warm Honey and Corn Yellow in clothing, who then has a blue (cool) tint added to grey hair, you might find that you can honour that simply by slipping into the blues from your palette, like Aqua, Cornflower and Bright Navy.
Can My Natural Hair color Be ‘Wrong’ For My Seasonal Palette?
Let’s be clear here: dyeing your hair is always optional. Nobody has the right to tell you that you ‘shouldn’t’ be grey (or brown, or blonde, or red) at any age or stage of life.
Your best palette will always work with your natural hair color. Which isn’t to say that adding a splash of color can’t make you enjoy both your hair and your colors even more (we’re definitely not anti-dye here!), but remember that your natural hair color, whether it’s as true and vibrant as it was in your teenage years or has faded to almost white, is always going to be in harmony with your palette. That harmony might mean a slight shift within your palette - read on to find out how that might work for you.
Aside from going grey, you might feel that your natural hair, isn’t ‘right’ for your season (sandy haired Winters and red headed Summers, for instance, are often concerned that they need to dye their hair to match their season). But it’s exactly the same story; nature will always create your own natural palette to be in harmony, and your natural palette will always work with your colors.
How Does My Hair Color Affect My Color Analysis?
Hair color; it’s a conundrum. To embrace grey or not, to enter (and remain on) that hair dye treadmill or not, to choose a single color for life or to embrace every hair trend from lowlights to balayage?
And when you factor in colorful clothes, those questions multiply - suddenly there feels like much more to think about, harmonise, and match! But don’t give in to temptation to sink back into those ‘safe’ neutrals (and as you’ll learn when you begin to explore the world of color, even choosing the right neutrals can put a new spring in your step!).
Instead, why not discover the answers to every question you’ve ever had about how hair color relates the colors you wear, and whether that changes when your hair color does?
Whether your questions are about going grey, coloring your hair, matching your hair to your color palette (or vice versa), or how to wear color that harmonises with your hair,we’ve answered them all here so you can get back to the important work of wearing color with confidence, joy knowing that you look as fabulous as you feel!
We answer the four most common questions about grey hair and seasonal color analysis.
How Does My Hair Color Affect My Seasonal Color Palette?
Put simply, each of us has a palette of colors that belongs to us. Your own palette is made up of colors that reflect the natural level of warmth, vibrancy and contrast that you carry, and when you wear it (either as clothes, make or, yes, hair color!) will make you feel more alive, put together, and confident, and that, as an extra bonus, mix and match endlessly to make beautiful outfits, giving you a harder working wardrobe and all but eliminating mistake purchases.
Here at Kettlewell, to help you find the right colors for you, we divide colors up into four distinct palettes, each one named after a season.
The group of colors that belongs to you - which will be named after one of the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter - is defined by your natural coloring. This means not only your skintone, but also your eye color, lip color and, you guessed it, natural hair color.
Whenever you add additional colors to your natural look, either through the act of wearing clothes or through adding color with make up or hair dye, this has an impact on that natural harmony in one of two ways:
Remember, your hair will naturally always harmonise with your palette (we’ll discuss the impact going grey might have further through this article), but let’s consider for a moment the impact of dyeing your hair, whether that’s to cover grey or not.
Does Changing My Hair color Affect My Seasonal Palette?
The short answer is that your palette is your palette. Changing your hair color won’t alter everything else about you - skin tone, eyes, brows, lips etc - so your overall palette will remain the same. However, that new hair color might throw an additional color into the mix that you now need to consider when choosing which colors to wear on your body.
So what does that actually mean? The first step is obviously to discover which seasonal palette belongs to you. If you don’t know this, now might be a good moment to head over to our clever Color Quiz and discover your palette, then come back here to discover the hair colors that will work for you. A good colorist will work with your natural coloring anyway, but having some language to communicate with them about the best colors for you can ensure that you are all on the same page when it comes to the task of coloring your hair.
Spring Hair colors
Opt for warm tones, filled with lightness and radiance. Sunkissed, golden, honey, caramel and champagne colors are often excellent, and browns stay warm and golden feeling, never too dark. Strawberry blonde and red can also work well. Greys stay warm, more like pale gold than anything remotely blue.
Summer Hair colors
Choose cool tones, with tonal blends of color - highlights, balayage and other techniques for layering color all work really well. Ash brown, icy blonde, mushroom tones, and even inky bluish tints to grey can work well. The key is to avoid anything brassy, although interestingly a red color can sometimes work - never go too warm with this, instead opting for tints of burgundy or cherry. Grey is always cool, from steel grey through to white, and can be supported with dye or simply a shampoo designed to eliminate blonde or brassy tones.
Autumn Hair colors
Your best colors are warm tones, filled with depth and layers of color. Again, balayage and deep lowlights can be really effective to get that feeling of layered up colors. Chocolate, deep caramel and toffee, rich auburn reds and deep blonde tones all work, but try to avoid going too light or insipid feeling with colors. Grey is usually naturally warm, and it’s usually best to embrace and even enhance this rather than trying to cool things down with blue tones.
Winter Hair colors
Choose cool tones, with a clear, definite look - no layers of gently textured highlights here, but rather block color or definite ‘slices’ of color through the hair, rather than tiny slivers of several shades. Think clear, crisp and defined when it comes to colors. Extremes like darkest brown or black, or ash blonde through to icy peroxide, can work well, but don’t feel the need to change mid-tone hair if that’s where you naturally sit. Grey is steel through to crisp blue-toned white.
What If My Hair color Does Not Harmonise With My color Palette?
There might be times when, intentionally or otherwise, your hair simply doesn’t harmonise with your seasonal palette. Maybe you or your hairdresser chose a slightly different tone to usual, maybe you simply fancied a change, maybe the sun or your shampoo has shifted the tone of your hair and pulled it ‘out’ of your palette. What happens then?
The key here is to remember that every other aspect of your coloring - your skintone, eyes and lips - still sit within your palette, it’s only your hair that will be altered when you color it. So, the core components of your coloring haven’t changed; it’s simply that we’ve introduced an additional shade that needs to be allowed when choosing colors for outfits, to ensure you still feel like the true version of you.
Shifting the colors you choose might be as simple as, say, playing up different tones within your palette to harmonise with your new hair color without sacrificing your best colors. For instance, if you’re a Spring who usually opts for warm Honey and Corn Yellow in clothing, who then has a blue (cool) tint added to grey hair, you might find that you can honour that simply by slipping into the blues from your palette, like Aqua, Cornflower and Bright Navy.
Can My Natural Hair color Be ‘Wrong’ For My Seasonal Palette?
Let’s be clear here: dyeing your hair is always optional. Nobody has the right to tell you that you ‘shouldn’t’ be grey (or brown, or blonde, or red) at any age or stage of life.
Your best palette will always work with your natural hair color. Which isn’t to say that adding a splash of color can’t make you enjoy both your hair and your colors even more (we’re definitely not anti-dye here!), but remember that your natural hair color, whether it’s as true and vibrant as it was in your teenage years or has faded to almost white, is always going to be in harmony with your palette. That harmony might mean a slight shift within your palette - read on to find out how that might work for you.
Aside from going grey, you might feel that your natural hair, isn’t ‘right’ for your season (sandy haired Winters and red headed Summers, for instance, are often concerned that they need to dye their hair to match their season). But it’s exactly the same story; nature will always create your own natural palette to be in harmony, and your natural palette will always work with your colors.