So what color did you think melanin is? I always thought it was brown. Now comes this page at the Science of Dress claiming, in hair at least, melanin is blue. While I have not been able to verify the scientific basis for the idea (in other words, google turned up nothing to support it), bear with me while I show you how useful the idea is. Suddenly I am able to see an additional layer in a person’s coloring!
From Hair Color Test:
Your hair is the “shortcut” way of testing for your colors and will give you a quick idea of nature’s plans for your color scheme. And it is easy to see……except:
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Except when your hair is an in-between color; these hair colors are marked with an asterisk because they are balanced and can be coaxed into appearing more warm or more cool by the Law of Attraction
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Or when the hair has been sun-bleached
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Or has become lightened because of permanents
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Or is very fine, therefore loosing color easily
Under these circumstances the hair should be more carefully examined for new hair close to the scalp. When color is removed from hair (for whatever reason), the hair pigment colors — blue melanin, red hemoglobin, and yellow carotenoid — lift out in exactly that order:
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the darkest color, blue, lifts out first which leaves the hair “redder” looking
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the next color to lift is red which leaves a “brassy” yellow
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then yellow lifts out leaving platinum as the very least and last “no color”
Okay, so how I am using this information? I’m just looking for visible blue in people’s hair color.
What I have found: it is much easier to spot primary colors visually than to spot variations in brown. I am also seeing blues in the hair color of little blonde kids.
I ran the color wheel post just before this because it makes sense to me that the pigments which make up a person’s coloring would be the same colors as the pigments which make up any other colors. In watercolor, I found the clearest, most precise colors were made from combining the three primaries: cyan, magenta, and yellow.
I also have to confess to you that I am a little out of my league here, both artistically and scientifically; as always, I’m open to input.
One final surprise, again from the hair color test:
This test is simple and direct. Hair colors are easier to see than skintone colors, so we begin determining where your hair color falls on the oval hair chart. Your hair color is the biggest clue because we know it is the exact opposite undertone color from your skintone color. Identifying where your hair color falls on the hair chart gives you a visible primary basic color upon which to build your wardrobe.
I have believed for a long time that most people’s coloring is a combination of warm and cool, mine certainly is. My hair raced right past the red stage, from dark brown to near white, and still has alot of black in it. My skin is palest orange. Blue and orange are opposites.
So here’s my question to you: is your hair the opposite undertone to your skin?
I just went through that website last night, though I read it rather quickly and didn’t quite feel like my questions were answered completely. The hair color section you have reviewed here was very interesting. My first inclination was that I have warm brown hair, but in reading further, I do think my hair has blue in it, with the ends revealing reddish tints from the sun. The cool hair tone fits with my green eyes, which counterbalances my skin tone. I don’t know how I’d classify my skin exactly … a pinky beige maybe. The hair/eye combo leaning towards cool tells me that my skin is opposite of that, which makes sense now why I don’t like to wear warm tones usually. I like to wear greens, blues, mauves. I don’t own any red clothing, though I do like cool pinks or dusty mauve (never peach!). I also like brown though (matches my hair) … and wear only brown shoes (balances my top with my feet) … stuff I never realized WHY it works. Thanks for posting that site. I will revisit it again to try to figure out my coloring better.
You tell me – my brain hurts from all this stuff. 🙂 I *think* my skin is a light rose beige/adobe sand – a pinky beige but not very pink. That seems cool to me, but maybe I have it all wrong. Eyes are what they’re calling soft – a thick, dusty blue green that sometimes looks grey, with a deep teal? ring. So that’s warm? Hair is a puzzle. You’re supposed to do it with your colors in your “prime”. I was born a redhead and pictures later show golden blonde hair. By elementary school I was definitely looking red but later everybody thought strawberry blonde. I would say a honey/topaz color. Many people thought I was blonde, some thought red. Comes out red in most photos. When I looked at it closely then my hair seemed to be made up of predominantly 2 colors: platinum or white and deep auburn. Doesn’t this make it cool even with all that red, some still present. Now I have a lot of gray and my hair looks bronzey but still with some red. Does that make it red and green?
I read that there was a color system that classes redheads not always in the warm category. I will go look for that reference and post it here for you if I find it.
There;s not too much direct information here:
http://www.colormeaseason.com/index.html
I think she’s primarily putting redheads who are auburn in winter. She makes heavy use of colors and patterns in the iris. My iris doesn’t look so cloudy close up in sunlight. Has a mustardy golden ring around the pupil. That’s as far as I can get. 🙂
Vildy – it sounds like your skin is cool and hair warm. ??? Eyes mixed? Or warm. It is a bit overwhelming. 😕
That other site is interesting, thanks for posting the link. While I agree with her more on the colors, dividing each into four, I resist the idea that it coincides with personality.
I seem to be an autumn verging on winter, but I got ties between several categories, even when I left out my eyes (which are green at the rim, brown near the iris, and used to be blue.)
Scrapping the survey, both my skin and my hair appear blue to me, unless I’ve been out in the sun, in which case both get distinctly reddish tones (my hair gets brassy red highlights when it’s bleached.)
I think the science behind stating that melanin is bue might be suspect. 😉
I can never decide what to call my hair. It has a little bit of everything in good light, but yet looks rather flat colorwise. That’s why I usually dye it — that and to darken up those fine blonde hairs I have so I don’t look like I have thin hair (which sort of do). I’ve been letting it grow out, though, to save time and money.
Hmmm…. maybe my hair does have some blue in it, whatever that may due to.
My skin is a very pale orange/yellow. It’s so light, though, that I have similar color issues as true red heads. I practically turn blue-gray under bad florescent lighting.
In fact, I was strawberry blonde as a kid before my hair darkened up (also, my eyes were violet I’ve been told but they’ve since turned green). Red hair actually does run in my dad’s side of the family.
Mine is so obvious. I have orange hair and freckles, I’m a warm! 🙂 Except that I feel cold all the time…..
You know, I don’t agree with coloration affecting personality – on the face of it. However, I do believe that personality is in greater or lesser part a construct of social interaction. I also do think that people in a society have handed-down preconceptions about physical appearance. Everybody knows the blond jokes. I also read recently where redheads get better customer service because people believe that they have a shorter fuse and don’t want to rile them! So if you’re treated a certain way because of your coloration – as an airhead or as explosive, for example, it’s bound to have an effect on your personality.
That is true. And brunettes are smarter, people with soft coloring are shy, etc.
So. Want to know what we do with blonde jokes? We make them over into “dumb criminal” jokes. he hee. It seems more appropriate to pick on people for something they have control over. lol
Goodness, I think I’m confused! Anyhow…I definitely have warm hair being that it’s somewhere around strawberry blonde.
So is this why the older ladies dye their hair that blue color? j/k…:)
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