Colors To Wear With Salt And Pepper Hair
However, one of the things that really bothered me after letting my hair go gray was that none of my old wardrobe seemed to look good on me anymore. So I reached out to Jill Kirsh, the colour guru, for some help and tips on the best colors to wear with grey hair. She is an expert at choosing colors that won’t make you look pale and in fact she claims that the right fashion color choices make you look great, even without makeup. I am all in for that!
The difference between salt & pepper and grey hair
If you were born with brown or black hair like me, chances are that as you are transitioning to grey hair, you will probably notice that you have silver streaks of hair (natural hi-lites yay!) along with areas of your hair that are still close to your original colour. When you have that mix, you have salt & pepper hair. As time goes on, more and more of your hair will lose it’s colour (melanin). Then your hair will be either completely gray or platinum white. Natural blondes will go to the gray stage much faster.
Why is that difference important to know
According to jill Kirsh, the fashion colours that look good on you will be slightly different depending on how you have transitioned. So if you believe that you have gray hair, check out this post for the best colours to wear for you.
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What Colors Look Best With Salt and Pepper Hair?
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1. Don’t wear camel, rust, avocado and ivory. Instead wear clear vibrant shades like royal blue, pure white, emerald and fuchsia.
2. Don’t wear yellow gold. Wear silver, white gold & platinum.
3. Don’t wear bronze, rimless or pastel eyeglass frames. Opt for black, pewter, navy or a deep royal purple.
4. Don’t wear coral, citrine and turquoise. Your jewels are lapis, onyx and ruby colored stones. P.S. Definitely set the diamonds in white gold or platinum. Just sayin!
5. Don’t accessorize with tan or earth tones. Your go-to basic handbag, boots, shoes & belts should be black, true red and navy.
***NOTE: These tips are for salt & pepper hair only. Check out this post for gray hair mistakes and solutions.***
WHY AND HOW TO FIND YOUR UNDERTONE
There is a general consensus that bright, “jewel-like” colors are best with gray hair and that silver sisters should avoid warm (autumn-like) tones.
But I find that a bit simplistic. After all, we all have different skin tones, so it’s not JUST the color of our hair that affects how we look in colors, it’s also the undertones in our skin.
Here’s a great way to find out if you have a cool or warm undertone:
“Look at the inside of your wrist.
Do your veins look blue or green?
If they look more on the blue side, you are likely to be cool toned.
If they are more on the green side, you are likely to be warm toned (because blue veins underneath a yellowish skin tone make the veins look green.)
What were you- cool or warm?
Now find a piece of jewelry, one in silver and another in gold?
What looks best next to your skin?
One is likely to look cheap and the other will look expensive and lovely. Do you get more compliments when you wear silver or gold jewelry?
If you suit gold, you are more likely to be warm and if you suit silver, you are more likely to be cool.”from Silver-Style-Life
If you really want to dive into it, you can have your colors analyzed by a professional color consultant.
Back in the 1980s, when Color Me a Season was a Big Deal, I had my colors done and found out that, with my pale skin with pink undertones and with my dark brunette hair, I was a “Winter.”
This meant that I would look great in “jewel-like” tones like sapphire blue, ruby red, and emerald green. (Being a rebellious teenager in the mid-1980s, and an art student in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I, of course, ditched those colors and only wore black. For freakin’ decades!)
Since going silver, I have finally started embracing the jewel-like colors the experts recommended to me, and WOW – they do make my silver hair sparklier and my complexion brighter!
And even if I do wear taupe or beige, as long as I wear bright lipstick – I stop fading away!
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POPULAR COLORS TO WEAR WITH GRAY HAIR
Let’s take a peek at some of my silver sisters who were kind enough to share their photos with me and see how great they look in various colors (whether clothing, lipstick, or jewelry).
Please note that the colors represented below turned up most often in their Instagram posts, so that does tell us that women with gray hair seem to gravitate towards these colors in particular.
PINK
Pink is one of those colors that works really beautifully with gray hair. Hot pink, dusky rose, light pink – try them out and see how you like them!
