Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (2024)

Written by Amanda Clewell ·

@berlinstacy in Arctic Mist Diluter, Virgin Pink, Sunset Orange, Cosmic Sunshine, Iris Green, Aquamarine, Purple AF, Violet Dream, and Poseidon

What is the Color Wheel?

The color wheel is a visual tool to explain and visualize the relationship between colors. When it comes to coloring hair, the color wheel is your personal hack to understand how colors will combine or cancel each other out when you’re creating your dream shade!

Understanding the color wheel will help you better understand color theory so you can better predict how specific colors will mix together and how to avoid results you weren’t expecting.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (2)

Color Definitions

When speaking to the color wheel, there are a few terms to know.

Primary Colors - What we learn in Kindergarten! Red, yellow and blue. These colors cannot be made from any other colors.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (3)

@erez_ivan in Poseidon

Secondary Colors - Two primary colors mixed together that create orange, green, and violet.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (4)

@kunailuv in Sunset Orange, Cosmic Sunshine, and Purple AF


Intermediate Colors - One primary and one secondary color mixed together: blue-violet, red-violet, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, and blue-green.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (5)

@lilygraceglam in Blue Jean Baby, Purple AF, Violet Dream, Poseidon

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (6)

What Are Complementary Colors?

Complementary colors are two colors that live opposite each other on the color wheel. For example: violet and yellow, red and green, orange and blue.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (7)

When mixing these colors, you will get a brown shade. We receive a lot of questions around natural shades from the Fox Fam, so this color wheel hack is good to know in case you want to go back to natural color OR to avoid mixing colors or applying over faded color that might yield a muddy result.

Knowing complementary colors can also be great in creating looks that are bold and contrasting, especially for split dyes or layering colors.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (8)

@ashley.smit17 in Space Cowgirl, Aquamarine, Virgin Pink, Violet Dream, and Purple AF

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (9)

@hairwaytoheavennn in Poison, Phantom Green, and Space Cowgirl

What Is Your Base?

When choosing a color, it’s important to consider how your base shade will affect the final outcome. Using the color wheel and color theory, you can have a better educated guess on what might happen or how to plan to get the result you’re looking for.

Starting From A Natural Base

Your natural hair color will affect the outcome of your look. Learn all about hair levels here and which AF colors will work best for your natural base.

Starting From A Processed Blonde

Most Arctic Fox hair dyes will look and perform best on hair that’s a level 9 or higher, for some, that will require processing. Using the color wheel to figure out the tone of your blonde will help determine which colors to choose to get the results you want. Most natural hair colors that are bleached to blonde will start with an orange undertone and may reach a yellow/brassy color at the lightest. There are multiple ways to cancel out unwanted yellow/orange tones. One option is to use a commercial toning product found at your favorite beauty supply store. A second option is to use the color wheel and “tone” with AF colors. If your hair is leaning toward the yellow side, pre-dye using Arctic Mist Diluter and Purple AF to create an extremely diluted purple color. If your hair is leaning toward the orange side, you might try pre-dyeing with Arctic Mist Diluter and Poseidon to create an extremely diluted blue.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (10)

@salinesimon in Arctic Mist Diluter and Aquamarine

For example, if you want a Poseidon to appear as a nice true blue, but are starting out with yellow undertones, your color might pull green. Since we know that violet is opposite the color wheel from yellow, mixing in a little bit of Purple AF may help counteract those yellow tones.

Starting From A Faded Color

If you’re a DIY dye queen, you might already have a faded color on your hair. Using color theory, you can get to the next color seamlessly without creating a muddy mess!

This video by Stella Cini is a great example of how to use color theory to get your desired color or read this blog by Thuy Pham on how she shifted her hair from green to purple.

AF Colors Charted

Each of our colors have specific undertones. Knowing where our colors fall on the color wheel, can help you make decisions on which dyes to mix to get the results you’re looking for.

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (11)

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (12)

@nadine.xoo in Cosmic Sunshine and Sunset Orange

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (13)

@chjango_john.n115 in Violet Dream, Cosmic Sunshine, Sunset Orange, and Virgin Pink

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (14)

@angelicabarragan3 in Space Cowgirl and Neon Moon

Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (15)

@_kenzurrito in Poison, Purple AF, Periwinkle, Aquamarine

0 comments

  • Tags:
  • Aquamarine
  • Arctic Mist Diluter
  • Blue Jean Baby
  • Cosmic Sunshine
  • Iris Green
  • Mixology
  • Neon Moon
  • Periwinkle
  • Phantom Green
  • Poseidon
  • Pro Tips
  • Purple AF
  • Space Cowgirl
  • Sunset Orange
  • Violet Dream
  • Virgin Pink
Hair Color Wheel Explained: How to Combine or Cancel Out Colors for a Flawless Look (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Msgr. Benton Quitzon

Last Updated:

Views: 6202

Rating: 4.2 / 5 (63 voted)

Reviews: 94% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Msgr. Benton Quitzon

Birthday: 2001-08-13

Address: 96487 Kris Cliff, Teresiafurt, WI 95201

Phone: +9418513585781

Job: Senior Designer

Hobby: Calligraphy, Rowing, Vacation, Geocaching, Web surfing, Electronics, Electronics

Introduction: My name is Msgr. Benton Quitzon, I am a comfortable, charming, thankful, happy, adventurous, handsome, precious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.