i dyed my hair dark brown all because of a color season analysis

The importance placed on how we look & present ourselves has always played a disproportionally large role in how our lives unfold, but with the rise of social media (and especially TikTok), the pressure is greater than ever to employ all sorts of unconventional tactics to defy aging & flaws and mimic the airbrushed versions of ourselves reflected on our screens & posts. The debate on how far we should go to meet our cultural beauty standards is a long-standing & nuanced one, but the point of this post is to point out a new beautifying trend that focuses on highlighting & enhancing our natural, unique beauty, something I think everyone can agree is harmless and uplifting. The trend is color seasons, and the theory is that we all belong to one season: autumn, winter, spring or summer. Each of these seasons has a different undertone (summer/winter = cool, spring/autumn = warm), and beyond this, there’s 3 sub-seasons within each season based on your contrast levels and more. Despite there being endless quizzes & videos on how to find your season yourself without dropping a cool $200+ on an in-person analysis, professionals stand by the fact that the process of having colors draped over your shoulder with no makeup in a sunlit room is imperative to getting the right results. So, what did I do? Just that — I got a color analysis, and you guessed it: it gave me a slight identity crisis.

A little background on me — I was borderline Targaryen blonde up until middle school, when my hair started turning a dirty blonde. My hair was a bright blonde year-round, so naturally, when the hue darkened, it was difficult to accept and led to affinity for routine highlights. But, that’s besides the point! Beyond this, because your 20’s are naturally defined by trying out different versions of yourself, my eye was often caught by girls who unapologetically rocked a unique hair color or even something as simple as brown — the point is, the common thread was just that it had to be a color other than my typical, mundane blonde. But despite the cheap Amazon wig purchases and FaceApp experiments, I couldn’t truly get a grasp on whether or not another color would look good on me. So, after hearing a lot about color analysis and seeing the transformative side-by-side comparisons of girls who changed their hair color to fit their season, I excitedly booked a session in hopes of getting the green light to go darker.

The professional color analyst had a sunlit room with a rainbow of color swatches to help her uncover my season. I was told to arrive without makeup, which I did, and the first thing she did when I sat in her chair, staring back at my barefaced appearance with an odd sense of discomfort (since I seldom studied myself so closely), is drape a white cap over my hair to prevent any distraction. This is likely because it was brassy and bleached, and clashed with the coolness of my bare complexion. However, my ashy, dark blonde roots peaked out of the cap, which lended to the idea that I was cool-toned, right off the bat. But to be sure, the first thing that she did was go through the steps to decipher for sure whether or not I was cool or warm. Pretty much immediately, we landed on cool. Blues, purples and cool reds brought vitality and life to my face, while muddy browns, warm greens and burnt oranges drained me of any color. Because of this, she recommended silver jewelry over gold and cool-toned hair colors, regardless of the depth (because we hadn’t gotten to my contrast levels yet.) At this point, I was convinced I’d be a Summer — particularly a Light Summer, because I had been copper & a warm medium brown before, and my fair features drowned beneath the depth.

She then proceeded to drape bright emerald greens, blue-toned reds, and stop-sign yellows over my shoulder, to which I shuddered internally. There was absolutely no world in which I would wear those colors in everyday life, yet I saw her eyebrows raise in excitement as she scribbled down check marks in my booklet. The summer colors — light mauves, ashy blues, and soft greys — were too soft against my complexion, bringing less harmony than I had hoped. However, the winter colors, especially the ones belonging to the brighter subset, brought definition to my cheekbones and jaw, darkened my brows and brightened my complexion while still keeping my cheeks rosy & pink. I couldn’t believe it. With my booklet in hand and a winter diagnosis to boot, I was out the door feeling shocked and unsure. Naturally, the first thing I did was google “Bright Winter celebrities” , because of course I did. Megan Fox, Katy Perry and Krysten Ritter all popped up, which also all happen to be variants of Snow White herself. Pale skin, rosy cheeks, blue-black hair. Nothing like me and a whole other look & aesthetic entirely, albeit beautiful & entrancing. There were also multiple sources saying natural blondes couldn’t be winters due to their low contrast levels. Despite this, I went out and bought some bright winter makeup products — a cool, bright lipstick and jet black eyeliner — to see if my investment was worth it. To my surprise, with some 60’s-esq white & grey eyeshadow and a thick cat eye, my face was instantly brighter. My eyes were shiny and vivid, and alongside the purple-pink blush and carnation lipstick, everything just blended harmoniously. It had worked. So naturally, I decided to go all the way and commit to this new piece of my identity (or so I thought) — a bright winter. I was saving Megan Fox pictures on Pinterest and religiously rewatching the first seasons of New Girl where Zooey Deschanel had piercing blue eyes and jet black hair.

After a few months of deliberation, I made the appointment to go dark. This was also due to the fact that my roots were coming in, my hair was feeling dull & dry and I had convinced myself dying it dark would miraculously solve all of my problems and revive it. Spoiler: that didn’t happen. My hairstylist, Hallie, reluctantly agreed to help me try it out, but warned me that if (and I know she was thinking when, since she knows me so well) I decided to switch back to blonde, it would take a few blonding sessions to get back to my light blonde and my hair would lean warmer, something I heavily disliked, during that transition. Excitedly, I waved away her worries and asked her to mix up my toner. She used Shades EQ to fill my hair (that way there was depth & richness to my hair, since if you just do one layer, it washes out to be translucent, muddy and almost a greenish tone) and I sat, eagerly awaiting my color. She blow dried my front pieces, and with starry eyes, I said, “Can we go a little darker?” She looked at me suspiciously but agreed, knocked it out of the park, and I walked out with rich, chocolatey brown hair, which I enjoyed for about… eight hours before I looked in the mirror before bed, my soft & fair, makeup-less features hiding under a halo of darkness, and burst into tears. Yikes. Little did I know, future me would be saved by my angel hairstylist with the patience of a saint. She gave me all of her tips to fade the color while I awaited my next appointment.

The next morning, I stared at my unrecognizable reflection, donning my newfound bright makeup, and tears welled in my eyes. This isn’t me, I thought. Why can’t I just accept who I am? In theory, it was unbearably tempting to see if I better suited another hair color — and your twenties are all about experimenting. I tried to pat myself on the back for trying something risky. But for some reason, I found myself with a pit in my stomach, conscience-stricken for rejecting such an integral part of myself and thinking about how, truthfully, I was using this whole color theory thing to mask my insecurities when deep down, I knew I was a blonde. It was a part of my identity. The framed pictures of younger me with lemon-blonde hair, my checkered smile showcasing missing teeth in my colorful dresses, were deafening, ever-present in my peripheral all around my house. This may seem silly to some, who change their hair color like the seasons, effortlessly and without any trouble. But to some, especially those with a Taurus moon (resistant to change & lover of stability) or a Cancer rising (emotional about pretty much everything) like myself, things as seemingly insignificant as hair color can serve as an essential building block to the foundation of who you are. Despite the split ends, damage and money reversing this mistake cost me, the lesson I learned was unexpected yet paramount to my quest for a solid sense of self in the disorientating era of being in my 20’s.