Deep Winter hair color

The hair you were born with

Most folks with Deep Winter coloring arrive with dark hair from birth. Here are the natural shades this season usually shows:

• jet black, often with a blue or cool sheen
• soft black, or a deep espresso shade
• dark ash brown that shows no red
• deep cool brown, nearly black in look

When your natural shade resembles one of these, you start from a color that already suits you. Most good dye choices for this season stay close to it instead of straying far.

Dark Winter and Deep Winter: same thing?

They are. Dark Winter is just the other name for Deep Winter, so anything said about one goes for the other. Depth comes first in this season, meaning dark features. Cool temperature comes second.

Your undertone falls on the neutral-cool end of things. An undertone is the color hiding just under your skin's surface, and yours pulls cool, not golden. That is why warm dye shades labeled "rich" or "sunny" so often look off on you.

Dye colors that hold your season

Every shade here stays dark and cool. Which one is right depends on how bold you want the outcome to feel.

• Jet black makes your features crisper and backs up your natural high contrast.
• Blue black brings a cool shine that flatters olive and deep skin.
• Espresso brown offers rich depth without the starkness of pure black.
• Dark ash brown holds your hair in cool shadow when black feels like too much. On dye boxes and salon charts, ash is the word for a cool, smoky tone with zero gold in it.
• Deep plum brown pulls forward the cool pink and berry shades in your cheeks.

The tone words on dye labels reveal a shade's lean. Ash and cool point your way; golden, honey and caramel head warm; neutral holds the middle ground. Playing it safe means picking from the cool or ash side.

Highlights and balayage on you

Highlights can be lovely as long as they stay dark and cool. This site lists dark cocoa with subtle cool highlights as the shade to use. It builds dimension while leaving your dark root color untouched.

Balayage is a technique where a colorist paints highlights onto your hair freehand, which makes them softer than foil streaks. The danger for you is going too light. Light caramel balayage pulls your natural contrast down, so any hand-painted strands should sit near your natural color and stay cool in tone.

What to tell your colorist

You do not need to know salon language to get what you want. Everyday words do the job. Here is what to say:

1. Ask for a dark shade in the cool or ash family (blue black, espresso, or dark ash brown) so the result suits your cool undertone.
2. Tell them no golden, honey or caramel tones, since warm shades fight your coloring.
3. If highlights are on your mind, ask for subtle cool ones that keep the roots deep, protecting your high contrast.
4. Take along a photo of the shade you love, because "dark brown" reads differently to everyone.

Shades to leave alone, and why

Each of these works against a Deep Winter:

• Platinum blonde all over drains the color from your skin.
• Highlights in warm golden honey argue with your cool undertone.
• Dyes in copper red or auburn give your face a blotchy look.
• Light caramel balayage pulls down your natural contrast.

The same pattern appears in this season's clothes. Warm orange and golden brown turn Deep Winter skin yellow or muddy, and light pastels drain the face. Hair sits directly beside your face, so it works on you even harder than a sweater does.

Going gray as a Deep Winter

Silver, platinum and gunmetal are this season's metals, and each one flatters your skin more than yellow gold does. Silvery cool shades suit you for the same reason, which means gray strands rest comfortably on the cool side of your coloring instead of clashing with it.

If you cannot tell whether your gray works for you, check a mirror by a window in daylight. Indoor lighting and phone cameras both distort color, so daylight gives you the truest read.