chosing haircolour

you have a great base hair tone, you're better off with highlights. You don't want to mess with nature; what you want to do is enhance it. If your base color washes out your skin tone or is "blah," consider single-process color. Single-process color is cheaper than highlights.

Highlights look best when the stylist uses at least two different shades. Ask for more around your face, they can brighten your complexion.

Keep in mind that due to root growth, all-over coloring will need to be touched up every four to eight weeks, while highlights can last up to two or three months, depending on what kind you get. Ask your stylist about a gloss treatment following your color. Gloss boosts color and makes hair shinier.

There are basically 4 types of highlights: basic foil highlights, baliage or "hair painting," chunking or "piecing" and lowlighting.

Foil highlights add strands of color to hair. You can get up to 5 different shades in hair to make it look more natural.

Baliage, or "hair painting," allows the stylist to add natural stripes of color to hair in large or smaller swaths. This is best for women with a great base color who want to go just a couple shades lighter. You won't need to get roots touched up as much with baliage as you do foils.

Lowlighting allows the stylist to add darker shades to hair. This gives color more contrast.ray hair can be resilient to hair dye because of its coarse texture. If your hair is less than 15 percent gray, opt for a semi-permanent color that's a shade lighter than your natural color (or matches your color).

Many women who are more than half gray opt to dye their hair blonde. For more information on coloring gray hair, check out this Q&A with stylist Antonio Gonzales of Eva Scrivo in NYC.