Does black hair make acne stand out

Everyone has breakouts and pimples now and then. To help your skin look its best and reduce the appearance of acne, you need to maintain a hair color that doesn’t wash out the appearance of your skin.

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By choosing the right hair color, you can look younger and healthier while minimizing the look of acne.

Choose a hair color that complements your skin

You’ll often see a fair-skinned person who wears a pale shirt and looks completely washed out. The problem is that the shirt matches her skin tone too closely, not showing enough contrast. The same can happen with hair color. The key to making your skin look its best and reducing the appearance of acne is to find a hair color that complements your skin’s undertones — not exactly matching, but not causing a stark contrast either.

Read about how to avoid at-home hair color disasters >>

Determine your skin tone

There are some general signs to determine whether your skin tone is warm or cool.

Warm tones

• Eyes: golden brown, green, green-blue or hazel with brown or gold flecks
• Natural hair: golden brown, reddish brown, red, strawberry blonde or golden blonde
• Skin: pale with peach or gold undertones, deep brown skin with gold or red highlights or those with freckles

Cool tones

• Eyes: deep brown, hazel with gray or blue flecks, true dark or gray blue
• Natural hair: deep chocolate brown, dark golden brown, ash brown or blue-black
• Skin: pale with blue or pink undertones, olive or deep complexioned, African American or Indian

Hair color for warm skin tones

If you have warm skin tones, you should generally avoid brassy, reddish shades of blonde because they’ll look very harsh against your skin. You should also avoid platinum blonde, jet-black hair and hair colors with blue and violet tones — they’ll make you look washed out.

Instead, look for rich colors with warm overtones. Great choices are chestnut brown, rich golden brown, auburn or golden blonde. Consider adding copper streaks, cinnamon lowlights or caramel highlights that are darker than your skin tone, along with a rich base color. If you have a warm skin tone and are very fair, avoid going too dark and stick with warm natural blonde, strawberry blonde, ash blonde or ash brown.

Hair color for cool skin tones

Avoid shades that make you look completely washed out or that offer too much contrast. If you have cool olive skin (generally those who are Latino, Mediterranean, fair-skinned African American or mixed races), then choose hair color that ranges from medium blonde to dark brown. Look for multi-tonal shades and consider burgundy highlights.

For those with deeper cool skin tones, the most flattering colors are medium to dark brown with a natural base color. Avoid coppers, auburns and all shades of gold.

Keep in mind

If your eyes are light and your complexion is cool, consider a sandy or ash blonde with slightly red highlights — avoid gold shades altogether.

Read more about the best hair color for your skin tone >>

More about acne

Coping with adult acne breakouts
Dos and don’ts for acne-prone skin
Best products to treat acne

Photo credits: WENN.com, Adriana M. Barraza/WENN.com

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Ok put some really blonde hightlights in actually they look gray and way to white. Its like it took the color out of my skin and my acne scars look worse. I look almost albino I guess. Its terrible. Im dying my hair back to brown in a week. Has this happened to anyone else?

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I haven't but I can imagine what it's like, darker hair colours will make your blemishes less noticeable.

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Are you serious I did not know that!!! I thought it was opposite. Thanks for the advice

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Well, the way I see it is... darker hair colours will match the blemishes, light hair will put more focus on your face. I don't know how to explain it but that's how I'm seeing it in my head.

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^ nope i see it exactly opposite, and i see it looking in your avatar btw. with black hair u have, your pale skin stands out more, as well as spots, but if i imagine u with red/brown-ish color of hair, u would look like clear by just that. well thats judging from far but still..

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As someone with naturally ghostly (and acne-prone) skin that's been dying her hair every shade imaginable for the past dozen years, I can say that pale blonde hair with pale skin will wash out all of your features, but make it super easy to spot any red marks.

I find that darker hair brings out the colors in my eyes and cheeks more, which makes them the focus, instead of any blemishes I may have.

Here's examples of light hair washing me out and dark hair bringing out my features. Neither picture is very flattering--I purposely chose pictures where I don't have a stitch of makeup on. Just me and my hair. ; )

But anyway, see what I mean? The color contrast between light skin and dark hair gives you something to look at, instead of looking like a blank canvas with pale skin and pale hair.

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^ I agree and I've also dyed my hair every color imaginable and spent thousands of dollars on hair color, just to come back to my very dark hair....For me, dark hair color warms up my skintone, warms up my face, and also having a tan minimizes my imperfections...obviously tanner skin will minimize redness, I just wish I could use self-tanner on my face, but most of them make you breakout -(((

Edited August 12, 2011 by calichick01

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As someone with naturally ghostly (and acne-prone) skin that's been dying her hair every shade imaginable for the past dozen years, I can say that pale blonde hair with pale skin will wash out all of your features, but make it super easy to spot any red marks.

I find that darker hair brings out the colors in my eyes and cheeks more, which makes them the focus, instead of any blemishes I may have.

Here's examples of light hair washing me out and dark hair bringing out my features. Neither picture is very flattering--I purposely chose pictures where I don't have a stitch of makeup on. Just me and my hair. ; )

But anyway, see what I mean? The color contrast between light skin and dark hair gives you something to look at, instead of looking like a blank canvas with pale skin and pale hair.

U LOOK FLAWLESS BOTH WAYS=]

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As someone with naturally ghostly (and acne-prone) skin that's been dying her hair every shade imaginable for the past dozen years, I can say that pale blonde hair with pale skin will wash out all of your features, but make it super easy to spot any red marks.

I find that darker hair brings out the colors in my eyes and cheeks more, which makes them the focus, instead of any blemishes I may have.

Here's examples of light hair washing me out and dark hair bringing out my features. Neither picture is very flattering--I purposely chose pictures where I don't have a stitch of makeup on. Just me and my hair. ; )

But anyway, see what I mean? The color contrast between light skin and dark hair gives you something to look at, instead of looking like a blank canvas with pale skin and pale hair.

U LOOK FLAWLESS BOTH WAYS=]

Aw, thanks. I joined this site when I started The Regimen, so that was June of '08, and it's helped my skin quite a bit. I'm on my own, modified version of The Regimen now, but I still load on the BP at night. ; )

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