Colour analysis
Colours for brown hair
This is your palette
In our quiz chestnut, chocolate and dark brown hair sit close to neutral – neither clearly warm nor clearly cool – and fairly deep, so the hair rarely settles your palette on its own. Brown-haired readers most often land in Bright Spring – fair skin under brown hair makes a clear contrast – and after it in True Autumn or Deep Autumn. Whether yours tips warm or cool, soft or deep, is mostly up to your skin and eyes.
What it says about your colouring
On its own, it says nothing about warm or cool.
It can carry clear, saturated colour.
It reads deep.
The palettes it leads to most often
Colours to try first
- Vivid Coral
- Clear Warm RedTomato red, not blue-red.
- Burnt Sienna
- Warm Rust
- Mahogany
- Deep Pumpkin
Tips
- Find your brown’s temperature in daylight. Copper or golden glints lean warm and take rust, camel, olive, terracotta and warm teal. A smoky, ashy or cool coffee brown with no red in it leans cool and takes soft navy, plum, berry, dusty rose and blue-grey.
- Then compare your hair with your skin. When the two are close in depth, blended colours flatter – sage, moss, taupe, dusty teal, soft plum – which is why brown hair with beige or olive skin usually leads to a soft palette. With deeper skin the quiz moves to a deep palette, and on the warm side that is Deep Autumn: chocolate, aubergine, forest green, burgundy, deep teal. Dark brown hair against very fair skin makes a stronger contrast, and it can carry clearer, lighter colours.
- Your eyes tip the balance. Brown, hazel or amber eyes keep brown hair on the warm side, most often in the Autumn colours; blue or grey eyes pull it cooler, towards the Summer and Winter palettes – cool pink, slate blue, soft charcoal, raspberry.
- Make brown your neutral. Chocolate, espresso, coffee and camel do for you what black does for other colourings, and near the face they usually sit more kindly with brown hair than black. Keep black for shoes and bags unless your result is a Winter palette. For white, choose cream or ivory if you lean warm and a soft white if you lean cool.
- Match your metals to your brown. Gold, bronze and brass repeat the warmth in chestnut; silver and pewter suit a cool, ashy brown. If you cannot tell, a brushed or antique finish, or rose gold, sits between the two – just as your hair does.
How to find your palette
Colour analysis reads three things in your colouring: warm or cool, light or deep, clear or soft. The quiz asks about your eyes, hair and skin, looked at in a mirror by a window in daylight. It never photographs or scans your face, and the palette it finds is yours to keep.