What ages you: Very dark color
In a quest to stay on top of multiplying grays, one can become overzealous with permanent color, layering it on, root to tip, every four to five weeks. The result? Hair that is monochromatic, potentially inky-dark and, as celebrity colorist Rita Hazan likes to say, wiggy. “Very deep color may have looked good in your twenties or thirties, but skin [of all tones] starts to lose pigment after 40, and the contrast between hair and skin becomes stark,” Hazan explains. Women with very dark complexions may be able to pull off deep color longer than the fair of face, but eventually everyone benefits from lightening a little. Umberto Savone, a stylist in Los Angeles, points out that even Mother Nature is on board with a bit of brightening. “Gray hair grew in for a reason: to give your face a softer frame,” he says. Bottom line? Even if you choose to cover your gray, maintaining the same deep hue you had at 25 is probably not flattering.
