Hair Color Ideas: Basics and Fun and “Fabulous” Stories about Hair Color
Hair color is a cosmetic. For a smashing effect that turns heads, you want hair color that harmonizes with your skin and eyes.
Many different reasons exist to change hair color. Some people want to simply “keep” their hair color from younger years. Others want a version of the latest hair color trends. Most continuous hair coloring comes from women who don’t want gray hair.
With the Beauty Code, you know how to achieve that harmony. When you understand your coloring in color terms, then you can link your color with the color undertones in hair color wherever color manufacturers list their color undertones.
There are many hair color ideas that people try—but hair coloring is not a process for amateurs, especially if you want to try one of the exciting new hair color trends like color weaves. I know full well. My hair salon sat on the street below a large university. Our salon solved many “home hair color” emergencies.
The Benefits of Using Professionals to Change Hair Color
Professionals in hair color take special classes and have hair color charts and formulas to understand the critical factors that affect their ability to get natural looking hair color. They study hair structure and how hair structure is affected by chemicals in hair color and perms. Professionals also take classes for all new hair color trends to learn how to do those hair color trends well.
Then there’s hair care when you change a hair color. When you both color and perm your hair, you’re doing double damage to your hair. Listen and follow your professionals’ advice on caring for your hair because professional hair colorists understand the different types of moisturizers and reconstructors that repair hair.
Off-the-Shelf Hair Color
Major companies in hair color have worked to make hair color simple for the public. In my new beauty book, Unlocking Your Beauty Code, I show hair color charts of the Beauty Code Color Collections aligned with the hair colors from Wella, L’Oreal, and Clairol Preference. This will help you choose better hair colors if you want to do it yourself.
Many factors go into coloring your hair perfectly, things that are specific to what color group you are in. For example: if you fit in the Blue Purple or Blue Green Color collections, plan to buy and use blue based shampoos to offset the warm tones that come up in any hair whenever you put peroxide on hair.
Fun Ways to Start Your Own Hair Color Trends
New hair color ideas on how to change hair color to create new looks without following hair color trends start (and really end) with weaves in their many varieties.
Weaves, a process where different colors are woven by selections of strands into the hair, have endless possibilities. The strand selections can be very thin and narrow or very full and wide with all possible variations in between.
As you work from the hair color charts along with the Color Charts and Color Coordinating Charts in Unlocking Your Beauty Code, you can choose or even create an amazing variety of colors to weave into the hair for every Beauty Code Color Collection. Starting with your natural hair color, weave in 2 or 4 colors so you have an uneven number of colors 3 (natural plus 2 added) or 5 (natural plus 4 added).
Uneven numbers appear more natural than even numbers. If you use two parts, section the hair into thirds.
For weaving, you can choose one, two or four colors to weave into the hair.
One color used with two different volumes of peroxide: 5 volume to set in the color as seen on the package or hair sample ; 20 volume to lift that same color yet get a different effect.
You can weave a combination of normal hair colors or vivid costume colors. The only limit is your imagination to create the effects you want. The Beauty Code Color System gives you a foundation from which to work to create many combinations successfully
Hair Color Story One: Susie, a Contest and Unlikely Winner
I’d like to share with you a couple of fun experiences in hair color. I entered the Utah State Clairol Hair Color Contest and invited my friend and partner, Susie, to be my model. Susie, was a redhead gone gray. I created a red hair color for her which we took to the contest.
By a quirk of events, I received my cosmetology license in rather unusual circumstances. I apprenticed in my own salon. I’d just received my license as a cosmetologist when Clairol announced a State wide contest in Hair Styling which included a haircut, color, makeup, and a total wardrobe look. My staff and stylists highly encouraged me, so I applied.
Susie, my business partner and commandeered model, approached the contest with great excitement; I was more cautious because I hadn’t yet mastered the wrist movement of working a blow dryer and the round brush together. I would be competing against veteran hair dressers of 20–30 years or more from successful salons throughout the Mountain West.
The rules of the contest stated that all models had to remain covered with big black capes until the winners were announced. All anyone saw were the hair styles, hair color, and makeup on the models’ heads. Even the judges didn’t see what was under those capes.
To get Susie’s “right” shade of red hair, I combined 5 different hair colors. The contest required us to style our model’s hair on stage. So before the contest, I had colored, cut Susie’s hair and applied her makeup in her Beauty Code colors because the first truth to a beautiful, striking appearance is wearing your best colors. Regardless of where hair color trends are going, what looks best on you is a hair color that fits your coloring.
When the judges announced the winners, I’d won first place in hair color and third place overall. First place in hair color—what a feat! And third place overall. I was in shock. First and second place went to a noted male hair stylist and a team of two men stylists; all owned leading salons in Salt Lake City. Now it was time to remove our models’ black capes to reveal our “total look.”
When the first place winner removed his model’s cape, the audience hesitated like a silent gulp, then clapped. Looking to understand the audience reaction, I saw his model wore an elegant black tailored suit; the jacket cut in a long V. Then I realized she wore NO blouse; she was naked from neck to waist under her suit jacket.
The second winner—a striking young teenage model with an elegant blonde color weave—now took our attention. As the two-man team removed their model’s cape, they danced a kind of giddy little dance around her. Her blonde hair color was remarkable. Laughing, they revealed her with huge double F breasts poured into a tight knit halter-top. The audience went silent as they took it in, then as if remembering protocol, they clapped politely.
All eyes now focused on Susie and me. I removed her cape. An “Ooooh” spontaneously welled up from the audience. They clapped and clapped. Some stood while they clapped.
Susie and I had decided on “The Professional Woman” look. In the Topaz, Yellow Orange Beauty Code Collection, Susie wore a silk shantung suit in soft sunset gold. Her blouse of clear mango and gold jewelry took your eyes right to her face. We’d hand picked her hose color to blend with both her skirt and shoes. Susie was not a ‘natural’ smashing beauty just as many of us are not ‘natural’ beauties. When we finished, however, she looked radiant—stunning from head to toe. Susie’s Beauty Code System gave us a predictable path in achieving her winning appearance. We did her hair, makeup, and clothes just as everyone else but with one difference— we had a code—a system based on science.
Backstage, the Clairol representative asked me why I had used five hair colors to get Susie’s hair color. I showed him my hair color charts and how they related to people. When I explained my logic to him, he said, “It makes perfect sense.” He continued, “I haven’t seen a prettier red hair color in any of these contests across the country.” Then one of the judges rushed up to me and said, “Your look was fabulous. If I had had any idea of where you were going with this, I’d have changed my vote.”
I learned from this experience that people recognize and appreciate class. Those other men had great hair color ideas, but their overall look destroyed what they had originally created. You want your look to work with your hair color to show off the real you.
More than the makeup, the hair, the clothes, Susie’s was a total look. Her Beauty Code gave her the power of the whole which is always greater than the sum of the parts. Her signature statement of herself autographed her appearance. The power of this Beauty Code is available to you today.
Hair Color Story Two: a Gentleman’s Quest
Neal C., Real Estate Developer and multi-millionaire, came to Marilyn with dark brunette hair color to “get his hair color right.” Not having seen his natural color, she wasn’t sure what “right” was. Doing his color diagnosis, she realized Neal was probably a very light blonde, an Adonis of fair hair. Insistent that he wanted dark hair, it took some “showing” him the right hair color with the right clothes colors to get him to agree to “his” blonde. When Marilyn finished, he said, “This is my natural color. This is the color my Mother wanted me to go back to.” In the end, his fiancée and friends gave him so many compliments he was very pleased. Here are his comments “after”. . .
“You want me to tell you about my hair color roller coaster. First, I had it dark brown. I didn’t like that and ended up dying it all these different colors trying to get one I liked . . . orange, black, red, yellow . . . burgundy was the worst. Then, because it was naturally blonde I was forever dying it to cover up the halo of new hair coming in. It’s embarrassing to have messed up hair color. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars to get it colored wrong before I found Marilyn.
“I was really excited when I saw me in the blues and periwinkles. When I have a dark tan those look really good on me. My dark green, my right green, is a green I love. When my hair color finally matched my face, it brought my confidence back. I was able to be more myself, and people treated me like myself. I learned that it entailed much more than hair color.
“You buy clothes to make you look good. Clothes are almost an extension of who you are. So, it’s a waste of money to buy clothes that don’t look good on you. And, it’s hard to tell if clothes look good in the stores because those lights pale you out. My suit, I would not want just any other color suit. And, if I hadn’t come to you, I wouldn’t have bought the right color.”
The Beauty Code Hair Color Charts found in Unlocking Your Beauty Code give you a proven path to get hair color you love.
