Color Contouring For Your Hair? – Fab or Reaching?

Before I even share my opinion let me tell you what contouring for your hair is. When you get your hair colored typically you would have chosen the color and the type of work you want. Whether it is highlights, a full on color change or an ombre look.

The idea behind color contouring is that the stylist will color hair based on your facial structure. In other words the color is placed in your hair in a way to give your face dimension, hide certain traits and accentuate others, much like make up contouring does.

The cool thing about this new phenomenon is that it is just the placement of the color that defines the contour and not the type of job that you are doing. So whichever technique you choose, (foil highlights or balayage ombre) it can be contoured at the discretion of the stylist.

When I read about the technique the claim was that it was a pretty hard thing to do and there are many stylists who have not quite mastered it.

Additionally the stylist literally has to make the decisions herself on what is the best placement of color for your facial structure. Additionally, hair contouring is perfect for all textures of hair so if you have kinky*, curly, wavy or straight hair it should work.

Facial types and the techniques that are best for them

1. Oval face – low lights for added movement to the hair

2. Square face – roots darker with some soft balayage highlights, edgy face, low key hair

3. Round face- Hair around the face should be darker to elongate the face, lightening the ends

4. Long face – Ombre look to create horizontal devision making your face appear shorter

5. Heart face- light hair around the chin and jawline, balayage ombre effect

Our opinion

It sounds great I do believe hair color can enhance ones facial features but the idea of elongating the face when it is round using a color effect or shortening the face when it is long using color is pretty hard for me to wrap my head around.

Not to mention what happens when your hair grows out? It isn’t like make up where you can apply your contour daily if you want to. What about dramatic colors like purples and blues and pink? Would it work for those as well? What if your hair is super short?

It just seems as if it would be easier to shape the hair using a hair cut based on my facial features and use color to add dimension to the hair itself. But that’s just me, what do you all think about this ‘new’ color contouring technique?