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Davines ALCHEMIC color depositing shampoos and conditioners

The Best Hair Colour To Make You Look Younger

We’re giving you the lowdown on aging hair, including the best hair colours to look your youngest, and tips for colouring it ahead!

Updated on June 12, 2026 | 3 min read

Jaclyn LaBadia, Davines Writer

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 colour 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 colour.

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 colour 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 Are Youthful Hair Colours?

The best hair colours to look younger add dimension, warmth, and shine.
Choose a hair colour 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 colour.

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 Colour Make You Look Younger?

Some simple, low maintenance colour adjustments can make a huge difference when it comes to combating the signs of aging hair. The right hair colour can flatter your face in such a way that it makes you look younger. But choosing the right hair colour 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 colours 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 Colour is Best For You?

Hair colour 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 colour 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 colour 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 Colours To Make You Look Younger

Discover the most flattering hair colours 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 colour shampoo and colour conditioner for brown hair to avoid brassiness and keep your colour 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 colour bright.

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Bronde

Bronde is a colour 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 colour. One dimensional hair colour 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 colour 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 colour.

Warm Blonde Highlights

A darker base with warmer highlights suits any complexion. Get this colour look by starting with a base that’s close to your natural hair colour. Ask your colourist to use a combination of foil and balayage highlights a couple of shades lighter than your base to achieve a bright, natural colour. Swap out your regular shampoo with a shampoo for silver hair once a week to avoid brassiness.

Photo by @melanieguille_

Mistakes to Avoid When Colouring Aging Hair

Colouring 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 colouring 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 colour 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 colour

If you have aging hair, you should aim to enhance and enrich your natural colour and subtly conceal grays. If you introduce a completely new colour, your natural shade will fight it until it oxidizes and turns brassy orange. Another thing that can make hair colour look unnatural is a dark hairline. The fine hair there grabs onto the colour and tends to get dark faster so your stylist should go a shade or two lighter there for a more natural look.

Extend the life and vibrancy of your colour

Strengthen and nourish your hair between salon visits with these essentials.

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Going too dark

Hair that's too dark doesn't reflect light. It can look opaque and age you, zapping life and colour from your face. Very dark, one-dimensional hair will put a spotlight on your grays and regrowth. Ask your colourist for a single process with highlights to bring your natural hair colour 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 colour and your skin tone. The darkest part should be where your roots are, and the ends should be lighter. Natural hair colour is never one singular colour.

Going heavy on the highlights

The point of adding highlights is to produce a natural, lived-in colour 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 colour change by yourself

If you’re thinking of making a bold hair colour move at-home, like going from black hair to blonde hair or vice versa, think again. Aging strands are fragile and extreme colours usually require extra bleach before depositing colour and that can be really damaging on the hair.

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Make the most of your colour with formulas designed for colour-treated hair.

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The Key to a Youthful Hair Colours

Choosing the best hair colour to look younger comes down to enhancing your natural tone, adding dimension, and maintaining healthy, shiny hair. By selecting flattering shades and avoiding common colouring mistakes, you can instantly create a more youthful, radiant appearance that evolves beautifully over time.

Maintain and enhance your natural and cosmetic colour

Incorporate a non-permanent pigmented shower routine to boost, tone, and extend the life of your colour.