How to Find Your Perfect Hair Color

Did you ever ask your hairdresser for advice on a new color and they responded with a bunch of seemingly random numbers of letters?

“Oh honey, you would look great in A8 or RB7!”

Or, did your stylist’s recommendation sound more like a Starbucks order than a hair color?

“Try Spicy Cinnamon Mocha with a dash of Roasted Blonde.”

When your cosmetologist said those things, she wasn’t trying to confuse you.

Those letters, numbers, and flavors adjectives actually refer to the tones and levels of different hair colors. Combined, tone and level are what give hair colors their, well, color.

Once you crack the code, you’ll be able to figure out whether a hair color is right for you from the name alone, without ever seeing the color.

What is hair color?

Before we can address tones and levels, we need to discuss what your hairstylist means when she uses the term “hair color.”

Hair color is a composition of pigments and chemicals (naturally occurring or artificial) that heighten or change your hair’s color. However, when your stylist talks about hair color, she’s most likely referring to the tone and level of the color.

Quick tip: stylists and beauty industry professionals never refer to hair color as “dye.” That’s why a stylist will say your hair is “colored” rather than “dyed.”

LEVELS (Levels, levels)

Your hair’s level is determined by how light or dark it is. Within each color family - coppers, blondes, browns, blacks, and grays - there are light, medium, and dark levels.

For example, a person can have light blonde hair, medium blonde, or dark blonde.

Different wig brands may have their own unique numbering systems, but generally flat black is a Level 1 or 2, and the lightest colors - platinum hues - are Levels 11, 12, or 13.

A neat trick if you want it to look like your wig hair naturally “lightens” in the summer: pick a new wig color that’s no more than two levels higher than your current hair level. Instead of looking like you got colored, your hair will look naturally lighter and brighter.

Not sure what your number is? Use this chart to determine your hair’s level.

Hair Tones - Hue do you think you are?

Your hair’s tone is defined by how warm or cool of a shade it is. And, no, we don’t mean the temperature of your hair.

Warm hair tones have gold or copper highlights, whereas cool hair tones have absolutely no gold or red hues.

There are five basic hair tones:

• Red (Warm) - colors with red tones
• Gold (Warm) - colors with golden tones
• Beige & Champagne (Warm or Cool) - colors very close to neutral, but with some red, gold, or ash tones, making a color warmer or cooler
• Neutral - colors with equal amounts of red, gold, and ash tones
• Ash (Cool) - colors with no red or golden tones

Sometimes, stylists refer to hair tones by letters. These are the standard industry letter labels for hair tones:

Neutral
N - Neutral

Warm
C - Copper
G - Gold
O - Orange
R - Red
W - Warm
RB - Reddish Brown
RO - Reddish Orange

Cool
A - Ash
B - Beige
BB - Blue
G - Green
V - Violet

Putting it all together: mixing hair levels and tones

Now that you can spot a hair color’s level and tone by sight, it’s time to learn how to do it by name.

As many of us have found out (