Colors for your features
Best colors for black hair
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
Black hair settles the depth of a face before any other feature gets a say. It is the darkest reading available on the scale, and depth is one of the four factors outright, so a head of black hair has already answered a quarter of the question.
What it has not answered is undertone, and that is where the types diverge. 840 combinations containing black hair return Bright Spring, Bright Winter, Deep Winter, Deep Autumn and Cool Winter, which spans both sides of the warm-cool line. Contrast then decides the rest: black hair against light skin is a different type from black hair against deep skin, even with the same undertone.
The honest key point
Black hair is a reading on depth, and together with your skin it sets contrast. It is not a palette by itself. Colouring black hair changes the answer at once, because depth and contrast are both measured across the whole face with the hair in it, while undertone and chroma are untouched. A dyed head of black hair is genuinely a different reading from a natural one, and the result worth having is the one taken as you look now.
Black hair with cooler skin
Where the skin underneath leans cool, black hair points at Bright Winter, Deep Winter and Cool Winter. Eight of their published colors:
- Shocking Pink
- Deep Emerald
- True Red
- Electric Blue
- Wine
- Royal Purple
- Bright Violet
- Deep Navy
Black hair with warmer skin
Where it leans warm instead, black hair points at Bright Spring and Deep Autumn instead. The shift between the two sets is direction rather than weight, which is why this eight looks related to the eight above and behaves nothing like it against black hair:
- Shocking Pink
- Warm Deep Burgundy
- Bright Turquoise
- Pine Green
- True Red
- Chestnut
- Violet
- Deep Amber
Shades to keep away from black hair
Extremes in either direction
The types black hair points at disagree with each other about undertone, so no single category of shade is wrong for all of them. The very warmest shades will be wrong for some of them and the very coolest for others, so until black hair has been narrowed to one type, the middle of any range is where to shop.
Three outfits for black hair
Assembled from the black hair chips above rather than from a lookbook — the first piece sits nearest your face and has to be right, the second is forgiving, and the third is small enough to be a bag, a scarf or a shoe.
- TopShocking Pink
- BottomShocking Pink
- AccentDeep Emerald
- TopTrue Red
- BottomBright Turquoise
- AccentShocking Pink
- TopWarm Deep Burgundy
- BottomDeep Emerald
- AccentTrue Red
Natural against dyed
Colouring black hair changes the answer at once, because depth and contrast are both measured across the whole face with the hair in it, while undertone and chroma are untouched. A dyed head of black hair is genuinely a different reading from a natural one, and the result worth having is the one taken as you look now.
If you are about to book a colourist, the per-season hair pages give the level and the direction to ask for rather than a shade name: Bright Spring hair · Bright Winter hair · Deep Winter hair · Deep Autumn hair · Cool Winter hair.
Your exact palette depends on all four factors, not on black hair alone. The scan reads undertone, depth, contrast and chroma from one photo, shows you the three colors it took off your face so you can correct them, and names your type — free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
Get my palette from one photo — free
Questions
What colors suit black hair?
It depends which of Bright Spring, Bright Winter, Deep Winter, Deep Autumn and Cool Winter you turn out to be, and black hair alone cannot settle that. The two shortlists above take both sides of the undertone split, because that is where the real difference sits — 5 types came up across 840 runs, and that is the honest size of the answer for black hair.
Does dyeing black hair change my color type?
Colouring black hair changes the answer at once, because depth and contrast are both measured across the whole face with the hair in it, while undertone and chroma are untouched. A dyed head of black hair is genuinely a different reading from a natural one, and the result worth having is the one taken as you look now.
Which metal works with black hair?
Gold or bright silver, Bright / polished silver, Silver and Gold, depending which type black hair turns out to belong to. Where those types disagree about it, the disagreement is itself a test for black hair: hold both metals against your jaw in daylight, and whichever stops the skin reading gray is pointing at your half of the split.
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Color analysis quiz · Undertone test · Check a single color · All 12 color types