Best Hair Color for Your Face Shape & Complexion
Hair color and highlights can help your face look thinner or rounder, and your skin look brighter. Photo: Getty Images
Just like complementing your style to your round, oval, square or any other face shape, the color of your hair and highlights can make a big difference in achieving your best look.
"It's not so much matching the shape of the face," says hair color artist Joseph Caron, of the Mark Garrison Salon in New York City. "It is more like working with the shape of the face."
As a hair colorist, Caron says he is always trying draw attention away from the bad features of the face and draw attention to the good features. "I just create illusions like makeup artists and clothing stylist," he says.
According to Caron, the perfect shape face is oval, but no matter what form you have, he says you can look thinner, fat, sick or healthy simply by changing the color of your hair.
"As an example," says Caron, "let's say that my client is Asian with medium brown hair and she wants her hair to be lighter. Her skin tone has sallow (yellow) undertones. She has a round shaped face and is a little overweight, which is giving her face the appearance of being even more round."
Caron goes on to say, "Medium brown hair lightens up with very golden (yellow) undertones. So if I place a lot of highlights the same color as her skin all around her face, then from the front view, you wouldn't be able to see where the edge of her face ends and her hair begins. This would create the illusion of her face looking even larger."
To counteract this, Caron says he would take about one-quarter inch of her hair around the edge of her face and keep it brown, and then set the highlights behind that. This way she would feel brighter with the highlights, but you would see a tiny, darker border around the edge of her face. "Now you would be able to identify where the faces edge ends and the hair begins," he says.
On the other hand, if a client has a skinny, narrow face, it would be OK to place highlights on the edge of her face with the same tone as her skin because it would actually make her face appear wider.
Caron also says that a client's complexion is ultra-important in determining the right hair color.
"The first thing I look at during a client consultation is her skin," says Caron. "The texture, blemishes, wrinkles, pores, or if they are lucky enough the lack of all these things."
The difference that skin makes with hair color can be seen in the way a young woman versus a mature woman looks best.
"Let's say there is an 18-year-old woman," says Caron. "She has dark brown hair and a beautiful face. The human eye is always attracted to the brightest color. In this situation, her skin is the brightest color, so all of the attention is drawn to her skin."
Caron goes on to say, "Since she is 18 and has perfect skin, this is a good look. But now, take that same woman and as she gets older, her skin begins to age. She may develop fine lines and larger pores. Then the wrinkles start showing. As she gets older, the goal is to start drawing some attention off of her skin." In this situation, Caron would start by softening the base a little bit -- maybe from a dark brown to a medium brown. Then he would add a few highlights around the hairline.
"Now, the attention will begin to shift from her skin to her hair," he says, "because the hair will become the brighter color."
Just remember, Caron advises, when it comes to color, there needs to be a balance between the hair, the face shape and the skin. "Then you will have a beautiful look, no matter what," he says.
Now that you know about the importance of the right color for your face shape, how about the right sunglasses?
Filed under: Hair, Hair Color
Tags: face shape, FaceShape, hair color, HairColor, highlights, joseph caron, JosephCaron, mark garrison salon, MarkGarrisonSalon, perfect hair color, PerfectHairColor, skin tone, SkinTone
Tags: face shape, FaceShape, hair color, HairColor, highlights, joseph caron, JosephCaron, mark garrison salon, MarkGarrisonSalon, perfect hair color, PerfectHairColor, skin tone, SkinTone
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Brit, 6-07-2010, 12:43PM
Colors really effect how a person looks. I feel the older you get and depending on your complexion the lighter/darker your hair color should be.
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