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The Best Hair Color To Make You Look Younger
We’re giving you the lowdown on aging hair, including the best hair colors to look your youngest, and tips for coloring it ahead!
Updated on April 13, 2026 | 3 min read
Jaclyn LaBadia, Davines Writer
Cover photo by @melanieguille_
When it comes to the latest and greatest in anti-aging trends, most of us tend to focus on skincare. But while we’re busy targeting wrinkles and under-eye circles, we may be overlooking something just as important—our hair. The truth is, your hairstyle and color can have a major impact on how youthful you look. The good news? You can combat the signs of aging hair and take years off your appearance with the right color.
Taking care of your hair as it matures should be just as essential as your skincare routine. Staying hydrated, eating a balanced diet, and using targeted anti-aging hair care can all help support healthier-looking strands. Choosing a hair color that enhances your natural features and complements your complexion can boost brightness and dimension, helping you achieve softer, shinier, more youthful-looking hair.
Key Takeaways
What to Know About Youthful Hair Colors
- The best hair colors to look younger add dimension, warmth, and shine.
- Choose a hair color for your skin tone for a natural, flattering result.
- Balayage and subtle highlights create a softer, more youthful look.
- Healthy, hydrated hair is key to maintaining youthful-looking color.
In This Article
What are the Signs of Aging Hair?
How Can a Hair Color Make You Look Younger?
Tips to Figure Out if You’re Warm, Neutral, or Cool
So What Color is Best For You?
The Best Hair Colors To Make You Look Younger
Mistakes to Avoid When Coloring Aging Hair
The Key to a Youthful Hair Colors
What are the Signs of Aging Hair?
The signs of aging look different on your hair than they do on your skin. Straight hair can suddenly turn curly and vice versa (read more in our blog about why your hair changes texture and what to do about it), your hair gets weaker, duller, and loses its volume. And let’s not forget the silver streaks that start to appear. The following are the most common signs of aging hair:
- Going gray: Hair goes gray when their cells stop producing pigment, which happens naturally with age.
- Thinning: Hair follicles shrink with age so that they eventually produce hairs so fine, they can’t be seen.
- Dryness: The oil glands in the scalp shrink over time, producing less oil to naturally coat the hair.
- Brittleness: Hair also loses some of its elasticity with age causing it to become brittle.
How Can a Hair Color Make You Look Younger?
Some simple, low maintenance color adjustments can make a huge difference when it comes to combating the signs of aging hair. The right hair color can flatter your face in such a way that it makes you look younger. But choosing the right hair color depends on your complexion. Most people fall into one of three categories: warm, cool, and neutral.
Tips to Figure Out if You’re Warm, Neutral, or Cool
- Try to identify visible colors in your skin. Cool-toned skin has pink and olive undertones while warm-toned skin has yellow and gold.
- Check the veins in your wrist. If they look blue or purple, you're likely cool-toned. If they are green, you’re warm.
- Look at your eyes in a mirror. If you see gold specks in your eyes, your undertones are warm, if you see blues or greens, then you are usually cool.
- Anywhere in-between with the tricks above? Neutral.
So What Color is Best For You?
Hair color for fair skin tones
If you have fair skin with warm undertones, your best shades are platinum, ice, silver, ash, sand, beige, and champagne.
If you have fair skin with cool undertones, your best shades are gold, caramel, amber, honey, and butterscotch.
If you have fair skin with neutral undertones, your best shades are strawberry blonde, copper, amber, rust, and russet.
If you have fair skin with neutral undertones, your best shades are true red, dark auburn, and burgundy.
Hair color for fair skin tones
If you have medium skin with warm undertones, your best shades are dark chocolate, chestnut, dark auburn, and mocha.
If you have medium skin with cool undertones, your best shades are caramel, honey, golden brown, amber, mahogany, and cinnamon.
If you have medium skin with neutral undertones, your best shades include espresso, soft-black, and licorice.
Hair color for fair skin tones
If you have deep skin with warm undertones, your best shades include caramel, golden brown, and butterscotch.
If you have deep skin with cool undertones, your best shades include dark mocha and brown-black.
If you have deep skin with neutral undertones, your best shades are auburn red, reddish-brown, and chestnut.
The Best Hair Colors To Make You Look Younger
Discover the most flattering hair colors to help you look fresher, brighter, and more youthful. From soft dimension to warm, light-reflecting tones, these shades are designed to enhance your natural beauty while subtly minimizing the signs of aging.
Caramel Balayage
This is a great option for dark hair and cool-toned brunettes. Adding caramel highlights can help to warm and soften facial features; and the balayage technique ensures your highlights grow out without a demarcation line. These things all lead to a more youthful appearance. Use a color shampoo and color conditioner for brown hair to avoid brassiness and keep your color looking rich.
Photo by @melanieguille_
Strawberry Blonde
If you have lighter hair that's looking a bit ashy, consider something fruity like strawberry blonde. Adding warmth to blonde shades in the auburn range gives cooler skin tone and complexion a glowy, youthful radiance. But reds are notorious for fading so see your stylist for a gloss treatment every six weeks (or so) to keep your color bright.
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Bronde
Bronde is a color technique that fuses brown and blonde for an almost chocolate brown. This is the perfect option for warm brunettes and blondes to add brightness and contrast to their hair color. One dimensional hair color can wash out your face, aging you. Ask your stylist for a subtle gradation from the roots.
Photo by @melanieguille_
Rose Gold
Rose gold has been having a huge moment over the past few years, showing up on both young and mature people. But this hair color only works on those with an adventurous spirit. And what better way to look younger, than to feel it! The best part about this hue for light blondes is that you don't even need a trip to the salon. Replace your regular shampoo with a red shampoo every time you want to go pink. Keep using it until you’ve reached your desired shade of rose gold. Then use it once or twice a week to maintain your color.
Warm Blonde Highlights
A darker base with warmer highlights suits any complexion. Get this color look by starting with a base that’s close to your natural hair color. Ask your colorist to use a combination of foil and balayage highlights a couple of shades lighter than your base to achieve a bright, natural color. Swap out your regular shampoo with a shampoo for silver hair once a week to avoid brassiness.
Photo by @melanieguille_
Mistakes to Avoid When Coloring Aging Hair
Coloring overly damaged hair
Aging hair is weaker and less resilient, so it doesn't bounce back as easily from damage. If you’re already working with damaged hair, overly coloring it will eventually result in breakage. Add a vegan conditioner into your hair care routine for a few weeks until your hair is a little stronger. Check out our previous post How to Rehydrate Your Hair After Bleaching for more ideas to strengthen your strands. When you do decide to go lighter (and you think your hair can take it) bleach it in stages so it’s less harsh.
Washing your hair too often
Every time you wash your hair, you strip it of its color and moisture. You lose shine as you get older, and overwashing only makes it worse. Skip a day or two more than you normally would between showers and use dry shampoo on your off days.
Straying too far from your natural hair color
If you have aging hair, you should aim to enhance and enrich your natural color and subtly conceal grays. If you introduce a completely new color, your natural shade will fight it until it oxidizes and turns brassy orange. Another thing that can make hair color look unnatural is a dark hairline. The fine hair there grabs onto the color and tends to get dark faster so your stylist should go a shade or two lighter there for a more natural look.
Going too dark
Hair that's too dark doesn't reflect light. It can look opaque and age you, zapping life and color from your face. Very dark, one-dimensional hair will put a spotlight on your grays and regrowth. Ask your colorist for a single process with highlights to bring your natural hair color a shade or two lighter. This will add dimension, disguise the grays, and still flatter every complexion.
Going too light
Our skin gets more sallow with age and a few highlights a shade or two lighter around your face can refresh your complexion, but going too light can be just as aging as going too dark. It's important to maintain a contrast between your hair color and your skin tone. The darkest part should be where your roots are, and the ends should be lighter. Natural hair color is never one singular color.
Going heavy on the highlights
The point of adding highlights is to produce a natural, lived-in color mimicking the pattern that would show up naturally if it was lightened by the sun. If the highlights get too white or icy, it can be very aging. Try to stay away from choppy, obvious highlights.
Making a drastic color change by yourself
If you’re thinking of making a bold hair color move at-home, like going from black hair to blonde hair or vice versa, think again. Aging strands are fragile and extreme colors usually require extra bleach before depositing color and that can be really damaging on the hair.
The Key to a Youthful Hair Colors
Choosing the best hair color to look younger comes down to enhancing your natural tone, adding dimension, and maintaining healthy, shiny hair. By selecting flattering shades and avoiding common coloring mistakes, you can instantly create a more youthful, radiant appearance that evolves beautifully over time.
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3 Comments
3 Responses
Helen Bradman
October 02, 2023
As l have got older my skin colour is a bit pasty and having grey hair doesn’t help so l have a wash out tint in pink which was good and many good remarks but l wanted a change in colour and went pale lilac very unsure what do you recommend thank you
Levi Armstrong
March 12, 2021
I agree with what you said that it’s wise to stay away from obvious and heavy highlights since it could make you look old. This is an excellent differ me since I plan to color my hair myself with highlights using a reputable hair color product. I’ll follow your tip and ensure that I don’t color it too light. Thanks. https://probeautydestination.com/collections/schwarzkopf-professional/color
Zachary Tomlinson
December 23, 2020
My friend is looking for tips on how to transform her hair into something that works in the summer. I like your suggestion on how she should try out a combination of brown and blonde hair color so that it gives out a contrasting look. This way, she can flex her hair on the beach as the sun shines on it! https://thehaircolorist.com/
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