Highlight Hair For Amazing Bone Structure

Highlight Hair For Amazing Bone Structure

A great way to highlight hair for amazing bone structure is to have a clear understanding of your basic face shape.

Once you understand your true face shape, work with a talented professional hair colorist.

A great colorist will understand how to apply highlights, lowlights and color to magnify your best facial features.

Working with the knowledge of your facial features can help to minimize hard facial angles.  Properly placed highlights and lowlights create subtle lines and curves to balance the features out.

In some cases you can use contrasting hair color to enhance or soften a face shape.

Basic Face Shapes

Hair and beauty experts generally agree there are basic shapes including: oval, round, heart, pear/triangle, oblong, square/rectangle and diamond/inverted triangle.

Regardless how many shapes are defined, most people don't have a perfect face shape.

Instead, their face may be a combination of two or sometimes even more shapes merged together.

Oval

An oval face is considered ideal.  If you wish to enhance an oval face, you can weave highlights from the hairline down to the middle of the face or along the sides of the face from the eyes to the mouth.

Precision placed highlights will draw attention to the middle of the face and highlights the cheekbones.

Actress Meaghan Rath has an oval face.

If you notice you can spot subtle highlights from the top of Meaghan's hairline curving down slightly into her face at the top of her cheekbones.

Meaghan also has very subtle highlights which flow from the middle of her face down below her chin which provides softness and flow.

Megan Fox who also rocks a classic oval, can often be spotted with very subtle face framing highlights with curve in towards the cheekbones and flow downwards to soften her perfect jawbone.

Round

If your face is round like Kelly Clarkson's, you would benefit from wearing hair full on top, keeping the sides more sleek.

Avoid adding any highlights to the hair directly adjacent to your face, which may make the face appear even wider and fuller than it really is.

To create a slim facial silhouette, stick to highlights which start at least half an inch to a full inch back from your hairline.

Add brighter highlight strands at the top of the head to draw attention away from your cheeks, elongating the face and adding proportion.

Hannah Simone

Hannah Simone who plays Cece on Fox/TV's has the perfect highlights along the top of her head.

The highlights are complemented by a great fringe for her round face.

Hannah's top highlights and soft fringe combined with her rounded shape provides a beautiful balanced frame to her face.

The actress has perfect highlights which provide an illusion of added face length.

Heart

The key features of a heart shaped face is a wide forehead and a narrow or pointed chin.

If you have a heart shaped or face shape with a wide forehead, the goal should be to minimize the appearance of a wider forehead and soften the chin.

Chisel a heart shaped face like Katharine McPhee's by considering adopting a blended ombré color scheme.  Ideally there should be darker roots and strands which gradually lighten from below the ears to the chin.

Model Gisele Bündchen popularized ombré color in 2007.   She showcased dark milk chocolate roots which gradually, yet subtly, faded to a lighter caramel at the ends.

The Kardashian and Jenner sisters have adopted a range of the ombré color scheme depending upon their own face shapes.

Lightness from the bottom of the ears to below the chin will create the illusion of a softer more rounded chin.

Avoid going light at the roots and darker at below the ears to the chin because this will give the illusion of an even wider chin and more pronounced chin.

The only thing that you want to pay close attention to is not adding width to the forehead.

Pear/Triangle

Kelly Osbourne has a classic pear shaped face with a narrow forehead and a wide chin.

The very best way to utilize color is to minimize width at the chin while adding width at the top of the forehead and at the top of the head.

Another option is to use highlights to create a vertical line just below the chin, adding a frame of light similar to how Jennifer Aniston wears her hair.

A traditional triangle is reversed with a pointed forehead like the diamond, but with a wider chin somewhat like a pear shape.

Oblong Face

Gisele Bündchen has a classic oblong face shape which is basically an extended oval. One great way to accent these features is to add fringe which will give more proportion to the overall face shape.

You can also adjust the perimeter line of the hairstyle to fall above the chin, adding width to the face and balancing the length.

For those ladies who aren’t quite as brave, styling can really go a long way with this face shape.

Adding width is about the easiest thing to do when it comes to styling, so add some big waves or a deep side part and some retro curls.

The only thing that ladies with this face shape want to avoid is long, straight, sleek looks because it creates the illusion of even more length of the face.

Square/Rectangle Face

A square or rectangle face tends to contain harsh lines in the form of an angular forehead and jaw.

Soften the corners of all the angles with an on-off center part.  Combine with a long layered fringe which sweeps softly across the forehead.

Add highlights to the fringe to give them a subtle outline which amps up the softness factor.

Add soft loose layers with subtle highlights around the face.

Diamond/Inverted Triangle

Minka Kelly has a diamond face shape.  Her gorgeous face has the most width throughout her cheeks.

The actress' picture perfect highlights fall from below her cheek bones and extend below her chin.

Her lighter milk chocolate highlights soften her chin and provides balance.

Her highlights and lowlights direct attention to her stunning cheekbones.

The inverted triangle face shape has a wide forehead and a prominent or pointed chin which would also benefit from similar highlights.

Summary - Highlight Hair For Amazing Bone Structure

Apply highlights or lowlights in harmony with your face shape to create the illusion of an amazing bone structure.

No matter what your face shape, pick highlight and lowlight shades no more than 4 levels from your hair's real hue for the most natural effect.

Although these suggestions might work for many people, keep in mind they might not work for everyone.  Be sure to consult with a professional haircolorist who can guide you to a picture perfection harmonizing color solution customizing for you.