Hairstylists around the world are using the hair contouring method to transform their customers’ look. This low maintenance color will leave your hair looking expensive without the high maintenance upkeep. With the use of highlights and shadows, you can achieve an upscale dimensional hairstyle that shapes your look.

Origin of Contouring

Contouring has been a pioneer in the makeup industry since the last decade. Using a bronzer and a highlighter, contouring is used to make subtle changes to the shape of the face. This revolutionary make-up hack has transformed faces around the world with support from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and A-list makeup artists.

This transformation has inspired a new hairstyle trend, hair contouring. This method uses dark and light shades in the hair to shape the face. This intentionally placed color works to uniquely shape the face giving an illusion of the desired face structure

Shadows and Highlights

The technical process behind this illusion is the intentional placement of shadows and highlights in the hair. This placement is reliant on the organic structure of the client’s face. Although there is no definitive number of face shapes, some facial structures we see are square, round, oval, long, diamond, heart, and rectangle. Identifying your face structure will help you decide if you want to contour to enhance your natural shape or use the shadows and light to change the structure into the shape of your liking.

Oval Face

Let’s use an oval face shape as an example. For the oval shape, the shadow, or the darkest shade in your hair, would be placed towards the roots of the hair by your stylist. The highlight would start at ear level, cascading toward the bottom where it meets at the brightest point tucked under the neck. The more prominent shade is the dark one with a blatant highlight towards the bottom of the hair. This illusion gives the impression there is a lot of blondes, but the placement and intensity of the blonde is what the captivates the human eye while most of the hair is various shades of brown.

Round Face

This method is done the opposite way for a round shape face. The stylist would process the outer layer of the hair from root to tip with the highlight shade. The shadow section would be under the highlight, placed in the inner part of the hair surrounding the neck. A small section of shadow will be placed directly under the front-most pieces of the hair which flows down into the dark hair surrounding the neck.  In this style, the most prominent shade is the highlight where the dark shade is layered under.

It’s important to note that in between the shadow shade and highlight there is a blend of shades. This blend consists of browns and blondes that create dimension through the style while the darkest shades and brightest make up the contour.

Hues and Cuts

Although traditional shades in hair contouring are browns and blonde, this technique can be achieved with many colors creating a one-of-a-kind look. Hair contouring can be used with any color if you can identify the brightest and darkest hue of that shade.  Hair contouring can be done on all hair lengths and textures. Experimenting with colors and cuts provides an array of unique possibilities.

Transform your look with this intentional hair color. Play with colors, cuts, and shapes to achieve the perfect hair contour for you. Contact a professional stylist a Beauty Lounge RI to achieve this beautiful style today!

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