Adding color to your hair is no longer a simple process that only lightens or alters your natural color. Instead, hair contouring makes it possible to change the form of your face without having to modify it physically.
It’s an exciting use of highlights, tones, and shadows that target specific parts of your face. The placement of shadows and highlights can draw attention, create illusions of a softer look, add or take away length, and create a broader or more narrow shape to your face.
The best part about contouring is that it is low maintenance and can be done on any base color.
So no matter what features you want to bring out, play up, or tone down, there is a contoured hairstyle that works perfectly for you.
Senior stylist Emma Baxendale of The White Room recalls using darker sections to make a client’s blonde look brighter:
“What surprised my client the most is when I added darkness into her hair to make her feel lighter overall. Lowlights and a root shadow paired with a bright face-frame took her from a one-toned blonde to something dimensional and bright, and I barely added lightness beyond touching up her face-frame. Her blonde finally had something darker to sit against.”
Before asking for more lightening, discuss whether adding depth could create the contrast you want. Emma explains why:
“When hair sits all at one tone it lacks shadow and depth, which dulls the hair, dulls the skin, and closes the face. Face-framing opens, lifts, and brightens; the depth behind it adds contrast and an image of fullness and volume.”
What Is Hair Contouring?
Hair contouring is a highlighting technique that adds shadows and highlights to help complement the shape of your face. This customizable technique works for all face shapes, sizes, and types.
How Hair Contouring Is Done
Contouring essentially adds dimension and depth to some regions of the hair, thus resulting in the appearance of a smaller or bigger face. Depending on the tone of your highlights, it will also create a brighter appearance on the skin.
Like the balayage technique, this is applied using the freehand method. You can discuss with your stylist the correct placement (as a rule, the lighter pieces live around the face to lift and brighten it, with depth worked through the mid-lengths behind for dimension and fullness) and the cost: most salons simply book this as a highlights-and-lowlights service, priced by how much is being added and the time it takes.
It’s important to note that lighter tones highlight and expand, which can give your face a lengthened look if placed at the top of the head or ends. Conversely, darker hues give your face a short, narrowed appearance.
One placement rule from the salon floor: if the rest of the hair is light, do not leave the pieces around the face dark. It reads backwards, because sun always brightens the face first; brightness belongs around the face, with the depth sitting behind it.
Foilayage (a technique combining traditional foils with hand-painted balayage) is often used for this process.
Learn How to Do Foilayage Hair Contouring
How to Contour Different Face Shapes
Where highlights are placed is essential when it comes to your face. That’s what makes hair contouring such a unique concept.
The use of color and shadows can bring attention to any part of the face. This technique works to focus on any features that you want to accentuate.
Although there are several face shapes, there is a way to contour hair to play up any features you want to pop the most. This brilliant hair coloring technique is the perfect addition to any hairstyle as it helps to change your look in the best way.
Oval
An oval face shape is highly versatile, meaning many different styles and contouring placements work well for it. For an oval face, add some depth, along with some shine and texture. These will all help accentuate and add a little flair to your features.
Square
Square faces typically have sharper jaw lines, broadened cheekbones, and a broad forehead. For this face shape, emphasize the corners of the face to balance it out properly.
To do this, add multi-tonal layers of dark and light shades along each corner of the face. This method can help to soften those corners, giving a less sharp appearance. Keep it dimensional rather than gloomy: even while softening the corners, leave the brightest pieces sitting forward around the face.
Round
Round face shapes are symmetrical but sometimes don’t have a sharpness to the chin area. These kinds of faces may also lack some definition in the cheekbones.
For a dimensional look like this, keep depth at the roots and behind the front sections, with lighter pieces framing the face and continuing through the lengths. Ask your stylist to tailor the placement to the features you want to emphasize.
Heart
Heart-shaped faces are wider at the top of the head and narrow as you reach the cheekbones and the chin. You can help widen the jaw line by adding lighter shades to the bottom of your hair, and keeping the root area deeper helps too; depth up top pulls the eye down the hair and lengthens the line of the face.
This placement of contour highlights with lighter shades will also help to give the face a more oval appearance.
Rectangular
A rectangular face shape is much like a square face shape, except longer. The entire face extends in length but not width. The forehead is broad, while the jawline and cheeks are the same width. They also have sharper angles that can be softened with lighter tones above the ears.
Darker roots can add a deeper tone, and darker shades at the facial corners can also help soften sharp angles. For longer faces, avoid bright pieces that start at the very root around the face; light beginning that high can stretch the face further.
Hair Contouring Vs. Money Piece Highlights
These two hair trends look similar, but they are very different in where they are put in the hair and the styling purpose they serve.
Money Piece Highlights
Money piece highlights were introduced in the ‘90s. This technique comprises chunky highlights placed at the front of the hair to frame the face.
These highlights are perfect if you’re looking for a fresh new look that requires little to no maintenance. Money piece highlights also grow out seamlessly, leaving the hairstyle to look nice and soft, and they are endlessly adjustable: thicker, thinner, softer, or bolder, sized to the client in the chair.
Hair Contouring
Hair contouring essentially blends highlights and shadows that help target and enhance certain facial features. It can also add length or shorten the overall appearance of the face.
Hair contouring is the route if you desire a completely different look for your hair without the hassle of a high-maintenance hairstyle. It’s ideal for anyone as it’s a customizable color placement that can add an entirely new and fresh style to your overall look.
