The Colour Wheel

The Colour Wheel

Nothing gets a hair colourist’s artistic juices flowing more than a colour wheel. The best colourist in the world would not attempt a client consultation, never mind a colour formulation, without consulting the theory of colour science and colour mixing.

The colour wheel is the one “can’t live without” tool that MHD recommends every colourist adds to their kit.

Science of Light

If you are just starting your hair colour journey, then your first stop is to dig deep into your long term memory and re-familiarise yourself with your primary school classes on the science of light.

You may remember that light travels in straight lines. When light hits an object, it is reflected off the object and into your eyes. This is how we see the object. We see the object’s colour from its colour wavelengths. Light is made up of wavelengths and each wavelength is a colour. Light is called white light and when white light hits an object all colour wavelengths are absorbed except the colour of the object. It is this colour that is reflected off the object and that we see.

White light being absorbed and reflecting the red hair colour

Primary Colours

All colour is made up of three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. Mixing these colours together in different proportions make all the colours of the light spectrum. It is estimated that the human eye can distinguish between approximately 10 million colours in the visible colour spectrum.

The Colour Wheel and Colour Theory

The colour wheel provides a hairdresser with an organised way to digest colour theory and put it into practice when formulating colour for your clients. When choosing a colour wheel to add to your tool kit you want to find an Artist Colour Wheel that provides you with

Primary Colours

Secondary Colours

Tertiary Colours

Complementary Colours

Warm Colours

Cool colours

At MHD we recommend that you also add the numbering or lettering system of the tones from your colour house to your colour wheel to help you when formulating hair colour. For example, writing /4 or .4 on your red, /34 or .34 on your orange. /6 or .6 on your violet and so on using a permanent marker pen.

Personalise your colour wheel with the numbering or lettering system your colour house uses to represent their tones

Once you have your colour wheel personalised and you’ve refreshed your colour science theory you’re ready to put your must-have tool into action.

Using a Colour Wheel to Neutralise Unwanted Tones

A client walks into your salon and they had a colour mishap at another salon. Her blonde hair is now canary yellow. Using your hair analysing skills and colour wheel, you identify that the client is a depth and tone of a 10/3. Their target shade is a 10/0.

Using your colour wheel and the theory of complimentary colours (opposite colour neutralise each other) you quickly identify that violet will kill that nasty canary yellow! You whip up a toner of 10/6 (violet with your colour house) and apply it to your client’s hair, following the manufacturer’s instructions. Happy days, your client is now the blonde she hoped to be in the first place.

Complementary colours are directly across the colour wheel from each other

The theory of complimentary colours will help you fix a variety of colour mishaps:

MHD Neutralise unwanted tones

Using a colour wheel to formulate with colour harmony

Colour harmony is formulating colours that work harmoniously to the eye. In other words, colours that work well together and will enhance your haircut, client’s eye colour or skin tone.

The theory of complimentary colours can also be used to create colour harmony. Your client wants to enhance their blue eye colour. You consult your colour wheel and see the blue’s complimentary colour is orange. You decide to formulate a striking copper colour to enhance those brilliant blue eyes.

Tracy Hayes puts this colour harmony theory into action in her online hair colour tutorial Triangle Colour Section.

Colour harmony can also be used to create a final result that portrays the harmony of colours that sit side-by-side on the colour wheel. Christiano Lanza executes this colour harmony example perfectly using violet and blue in his hair colouring video Overlapping Tones.

Incorporating the colour wheel into each and every client consultation and colour formulation is not only inspiring but a satisfying element of your job as a hair colourist.

To find out more information on utilising a colour wheel as a hair colourist watch our colour theory lectures:

Colour Theory Part 2: Why we colour hair

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Original article and pictures take https://myhairdressers .com/blog/2016/08/04/colour-wheel/ site