Colors for your features
Best colors for gray hair
By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated
Going gray changes two of the four factors and leaves two alone, and knowing which is which saves a great deal of wardrobe money. Depth moves, because the hair is lighter than it was. Contrast moves, because the gap between hair and skin has narrowed. Undertone and chroma do not move at all.
The consequence is one most people notice before they can name it: colors that worked for years start to feel heavy. Our sweep agrees — 840 combinations with gray or white hair return Light Summer, Light Spring, Cool Summer, Warm Autumn, Cool Winter and Soft Autumn, which are cooler and softer than the types the same person would have landed in with their original color. Gray hair genuinely does move you toward cooler, gentler palettes, and saying otherwise would be flattery.
The honest key point
Gray hair is a reading on depth, and together with your skin it sets contrast. It is not a palette by itself. Covering the gray moves you back toward where you were, and that is a legitimate choice rather than a cheat — a result describes how you currently look, which is also how you are currently seen. If you do color it, read the page for the shade you color it to rather than this one.
Gray hair with cooler skin
Where the skin underneath leans cool, gray hair points at Light Summer, Cool Summer and Cool Winter. Eight of their published colors:
- Rose
- Deep Raspberry
- True Red
- Cool Berry
- Blueberry
- Royal Purple
- Slate Blue
- Plum
Gray hair with warmer skin
Where it leans warm instead, gray hair points at Light Spring, Warm Autumn and Soft 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 gray hair:
- Poppy Orange
- Deep Rust
- Deep Rust
- Warm Turquoise
- Forest Green
- Deep Olive
- Coral Red
- Burnt Sienna
Shades to keep away from gray hair
Extremes in either direction
The types gray 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 gray hair has been narrowed to one type, the middle of any range is where to shop.
Three outfits for gray hair
Assembled from the gray 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.
- TopRose
- BottomPoppy Orange
- AccentDeep Raspberry
- TopTrue Red
- BottomDeep Rust
- AccentRose
- TopDeep Rust
- BottomDeep Raspberry
- AccentTrue Red
Natural against dyed
Covering the gray moves you back toward where you were, and that is a legitimate choice rather than a cheat — a result describes how you currently look, which is also how you are currently seen. If you do color it, read the page for the shade you color it to rather than this one.
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: Light Summer hair · Light Spring hair · Cool Summer hair · Warm Autumn hair · Cool Winter hair · Soft Autumn hair.
Your exact palette depends on all four factors, not on gray 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 gray hair?
It depends which of Light Summer, Light Spring, Cool Summer, Warm Autumn, Cool Winter and Soft Autumn you turn out to be, and gray hair alone cannot settle that. The two shortlists above take both sides of the undertone split, because that is where the real difference sits — 6 types came up across 840 runs, and that is the honest size of the answer for gray hair.
Does dyeing gray hair change my color type?
Covering the gray moves you back toward where you were, and that is a legitimate choice rather than a cheat — a result describes how you currently look, which is also how you are currently seen. If you do color it, read the page for the shade you color it to rather than this one.
Which metal works with gray hair?
Silver and Gold, depending which type gray hair turns out to belong to. Where those types disagree about it, the disagreement is itself a test for gray 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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