Beautiful Brunettes

Brunettes unite! Brown hair doesn't have to  be boring. There are subtle and dramatic ways to enhance your earthy tresses without making a complete color change or becoming a slave to hair color.

Brunette is beautiful. Your hair color may fit your complexion and personality perfectly, but you may still be looking for a change. The following ten ways to change your brown hair are subtle and designed to enhance you’re your tones, not change your color completely. 

1. Try a color update with little commitment.  Warm up your hair color with a red or auburn color wash. Glaze your brown hair with a translucent color gloss such as Redken Shades EQ or PM Shines. Your new color will gently fade away within six weeks.
2. Get lively hair color with even less commitment. Use any of the many color pigmented shampoos to add golden tones, red tones or deeper brown tones. Use blue or purple pigmented shampoo to tone out warmth and create a neutral brown tone. These enhancements fade within two shampoos.
3. Have you been tinting your hair solid brown to cover gray? It is your natural color and looks ok but it’s boring? Use foiling or a cap to add a few highlights through the bangs area and the top. A weak lightening solution will lighten hair a shade or two, or more if you choose. These few highlights require very little extra work but soften skin tones and brighten your face.
4. Do you have light to medium natural brown hair? Add lowlights. These are strands of tinted hair that is at least two shades darker than your natural color. The lowlights add depth and richness to your color. When adding them, stay away from the hairline and the part. They will grow out quite easily if you choose not to keep up the process.
5. To your light to medium toned brown hair, add highlights of at least two shades lighter and lowlights of at least two shades darker. Create fine strands and alternate – lighter, natural, and darker throughout your hair. Again, stay away from the front hair line and the part.
6. To your light or medium toned brown hair, add strands of blonde and strands of auburn.  The shade of blonde and auburn will depend on how light or dark you hair is. Create very fine strands of the two shades, and watch your hair shimmer as it moves.
7. Do you have dark brown hair? Add strands of deep red brown. If the red brown is darker than your natural color, all you have to do is add the color. If your natural color is very dark, you will pre-lighten the strands to a gold tone and then apply red semi-permanent color gloss over all of your hair. The red color will adhere to the pre-lightened strands and should stay in over six weeks.
8. Section off about 1/3 to 1/2 inch of hair all around your face. Lighten the hair in this area about two shades to a lighter brown. This softens skin tones and facial features, and is very easy to  retouch as your hair grows.
9. Section off the hair in the nape area – all hair below the occipital bone of your head. Tint the hair in this area at least two shades darker than your natural hair color. This is very effective if your hair is layered so that the darker hair extends out from under the lighter hair. If your hair is one length, the dark hair peaks out occasionally.
10. Are you finding more and more gray or white hairs invading your natural brown hair? Using foil or painting with a hair color brush, add strands of your own brown tone to reduce the amount of graywithout tinting all over.

My Kindle book  Do Your Own Hair Color  tells you how, and gives many more tips on beautiful hair color. Get it now for only 99 cents.

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