Hi Friends,

I bought a few hair coupons for the first time during the sale and wasn't sure how to use them. I realized I could either turn in the coupon for a permanent hairstyle at the salon, or I could add it to my wardrobe for the default hair. I accidentally redeemed one of the hair coupons, and now I am having trouble getting an idea of how to make the hair look good. I don't think I understand color theory and all that jazz--I just know there's a base color, a shadow (dark color), and a highlight color (lightest color)?

Looking to recreate something light blond, or light pink. If anyone has any suggestions on exact color codes to use, I'll greatly appreciate it! Hopeful that'll give me an idea of what to choose/where to choose on the color square.

Thanks!

i don't have any exact hex codes for you but these are the general principles i tend to stick with:

• base color should stay in the range of moderate saturation unless i'm going for a super vibrant (high saturation) or super muted (low saturation) look.
• shadow color should be darker, more saturated, AND either warmer or cooler (depending on the intended effect) than the base color.
• highlight color should of course be lighter, often a little less saturated, and i tend to skew the temperature in the opposite direction of the shadow (so if the shadow skews warmer than the base color, i might make the highlight skew cooler).
• some hair colors have various "sections" that work in different ways, so i always experiment with these to see how they affect the overall look. in particular, the hairstyles with gradient sections are my favorites for creating a greater sense of depth, or incorporating multiple colors from the outfit in a subtle & nuanced way.
• i pretty much never use straight black or straight white, as this will make the hair look flat and muddy. even for very dark hair colors, i still stay away from the bottom 30-ish pixels of the color picker box. a super duper light hair color might warrant pure white highlights, but it depends.

so for example if i were making a pastel pink hair color, i might do:

• base: a soft pinkish hue within the top 20-ish pixels of the color box, more to the left side than the right but not TOO far to the left or else you're getting into gray territory
• shadow: a bright, moderately saturated magenta somewhere around the upper-middle of the box
• highlight: a pale peach or yellow, very close to the top left corner of the box

i'll often add multiple color variants to the palette, slightly adjusting the hue/brightness/saturation each time; that way i can experiment with picking different options for everything and see which combinations look best.

Ahhh thank you so much for the color codes!!! Your current blond looks great, I'm trying to achieve that too.

Maybe something lighter too, but when I tried to do it myself I get something that looks kinda orange or too yellow sometimes I don't know what I'm doing anymore lol T-T

Thank you for this post link too, you've unlocked a whole new world for me to explore; these hair colors are awesome!

@ YungBug if your blonde is looking too orange or yellow, you need to reduce the saturation. i find a lot of people are scared of going too low in the saturation because they think of blonde as a very yellowish color, but the fact is natural hair colors are always going to be on the low-to-moderate end of the saturation spectrum. experiment with more natural muted tones until you find a combo that looks right.

for example, for a soft pale blonde hair, i went with a base of , a shadow color of , and a highlight of —all very unsaturated hues, because again, that's the range lighter natural hair tones are going to fall under. (depending on which hair you use, some of these colors might look better a little lighter or darker, since shading works differently on different salon styles.)