I love this whole concept of Neutral Colors. Remember when "Color Me Beautiful" was big in the 70's and 80's.

I had a French woman working for me that was an esthetician and she specialized in color with make-up plus she had her own program for helping women with Color in theiir wardrobes, big fabric swatches and all. She called her program "My Aura". Her background was in fashion...in the 40's she studied with Yves Saint-Laurent and knew calvin Klein when he walked the street's of Paris trying to find a job. (wow I have to look her up...)

She used and made (we were custom blending make-up back then) neutral foundation colors for clients after they had their colors done.

Now with the Mineral Make-up we are creating neutral colors. I want to find more info on this...
I had a class on hair color that was very similar with Roy Peters ...he was with Redken for years...OK, noe I have to go find my notes from that class LOL.

See what you started m2.

You Guy's know all of this, I just needed to refresh my brain to get to the deeper concept of mixing haircolor & make-up colors that work on almost any skintone.


There are a few different ways to make neutral colors. You can blend black and white to make gray. You can create brown in two ways?by blending two complementary colors together, or by blending all three primary colors together.


Neutral colors help to put the focus on other colors or serve to tone down colors that might otherwise be overpowering on their own. To some extent blacks, browns, tans, golds, and beige colors are considered warm. While white, ivory, silver, and gray are somewhat cooler colors. Yet these warm and cool attributes are flexible and more subtle than that of reds or blues.

Neutral colors can be made by mixing:
all three primaries together ?plus some black or white.


Value---> Contrast----> Balance = Desired Result



Complimentary Colors mixed make Neutral colors.

When mixed together, complements make a neutral gray. You can make a color less bright and intense by blending in a small amount of its complement.
So, together each complementary pair has all three primary colors!


m2 talked about how beautiful a red hair color could be if red/orange tones are mixed with red/violet tones. (sidenote; the red/violet has a deeper color value because of the Blue)

I love creating a Mineral Foundation color that can be used on anyone as far as tone is concerned----->> the only thing that has to be adjusted is the depth.

(another sidenote; I live in a part of my country where there is less diversity when it comes to skintones. This makes it easier to custom blend Foundations.)

The stronger the color needed the harder it is to really refine the skill of keeping it neutral.

I don't know where I'm going with this... Help me out with your thoughts.

ha! that's where i've learned so much about colors-Roy Peters. he's hilarious and like a color encyclopedia of usable information. i wish i could remember 1/2 of what he knows...
and definitely always rereading the notes-reviewing hair videos. it's amazing what you can 'forget'....

You can say that again. Roy is the man! I've had many of his classes. The last class was a "History of Hair" class, what a blast. The first thing he said before we got started was"If any of you are offended by the word's ...bitch, shit, hell (and a few other explitives)...you can leave right now. I love him...lol and what a great class!!

This one's over my head guys. I wasn't aware that there were any truely neutral colors. Can you tell me a little more about how, and why, this works?

I thought that all colours were either warm or cool apart from the very middle of green and the very middle of purple.
:-/

LOL...it's over my head too. But when your mixing Foundation Colors...which are beiges and tans and sands and creams...it's way easier than brighter or deeper darker colors. Because those foundation colors are such neutral colors anyway. Especially in my area where we don't even have many ethnic skintones to deal with.

I think a great colorists and if their great at toning and even great painters...can adjust a bit and it will be be the difference between ok and great...they not only have a trained eye but they know thieir medium so well and can adjust a project even the tinyest bit.