Does Changing Your Hair Colour Change Your Colour Palette?
Reader Question: How does your hair colour affect your palette. For example, if I was to return to my natural dark strawberry blonde/reddy brown colour, would that make me a different palette. I understand that it would affect my contrast but would it mean that I become a different palette? I know lots of people change palette as they grey, and logically it works the other way around too. Today my hair is blue (just for a moment - won't last) and I'm wondering if that affects it too, and how.Absolutely hair colour can impact on the palette that works for you today. Your palette is determined by a few factors - and these include:
- Hair colour - and hair value - that is how light or dark your hair colour is.
- Hair intensity - do you have a bright or solid hair colours, or is it more muted or smoky?
When your hair naturally changes colour (goes grey), your skin is also becoming more muted and you are also losing pigments in your eyes so colouring becomes softer, smokier and greyed out, which is why you need to soften down the colours you wear. You may also become lighter as well, if you started off with darker hair colour., moving you from darker colours into lighter ones. You need to think about adjusting your wardrobe - find out more about how to do that here.
Changing hair colour, along with changing your ideal value (the overall lightness or darkness of outfits) it can also change your value contrast and colour contrast - which impacts on how you put colours in outfits together. You may find that you need to make large changes to your wardrobe or how you put outfits together if you make any kind of major change to your hair colour! I know when I got some highlights in my otherwise dark brown hair (the attempt to hide my greys), I found that every item of clothing I bought when I had those highlights didn't work when I went back to my regular dark brown. Then when I went blonde, I had to rethink my entire wardrobe as many items were too dark, and the high-value contrast I'd always worn no longer suited me.
Over the past decade, I've had a couple of radical hair colour changes - from dark, cool and bright colouring to platinum blonde and now to a light grey. This has meant at every stage I've had to reassess my wardrobe and make tweaks along the way in what I wear and how I wear my clothes.
The blue hair will make you colour dominant and will up your colour contrast too - making more colourful outfits more appealing on you!
Not sure if your hair colours suits you? Check out these tips.
Time to Reassess Your Best Colours?
Every 5-15 years you need to reasess your colour palette as there is a good chance the colours you have been wearing are no longer your best colours. If you do decide to have a radical hair colour change, then you absolutely need to reassess it as this will be impacting on your best colours. Go from dark to light, from coloured to grey, or decide to completely change the colour, any of these can change both your colour palette or just how you put your outfits together - as changes like these impact on your ideal value, your value contrast and your colour contrast. You'll discover all these plus so much more in a personal colour analysis with me (or any of the colour consultants I've trained).
Update your colours with a personal colour analysis - it can be done in-person or online as a stand-alone service, or as part of my full image program 7 Steps to Style.
More TIps on Choosing and Wearing Colours
Why I Decided to Embrace My Grey Hair and Become a Silver Foxette
Why Wearing Softer Colours With Grey Hair Will Not Make You Fade Away
Discover the 4 Nifty Low Colour Contrast Dressing Tricks Used by Princess Mary
Choosing Prints and Patterns with the Right Colour Contrast for You
