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If you suffer from rosacea like I do, you’re likely all too familiar with the frustration of managing persistent redness, visible blood vessels, and flare-ups that can make your skin difficult to conceal.

Rosacea is more than just a red face. It’s a chronic inflammatory condition, and it’s a challenge that can impact your confidence. While medical treatment options like laser therapy, azelaic acid, and topical creams can help manage rosacea symptoms, one often overlooked tool for balancing your complexion is hair color. Yes, the right hair color can actually help to minimize the appearance of facial redness and give you a radiant glow.

Understanding Rosacea: Different Types and Common Symptoms

Before we dive into color theory, it’s important to understand that rosacea isn’t a one-size-fits-all condition. There are four different types of rosacea, and each person’s experience can vary based on their form of rosacea.

• Erythematotelangiectatic rosacea (ETR): This type is characterized by redness and visible blood vessels.
• Papulopustular rosacea: Often mistaken for acne, this type involves red bumps, breakouts, and persistent redness.
• Phymatous rosacea: This causes the skin to thicken, resulting in a bumpy texture and sometimes thick skin.
• Ocular rosacea: This type affects the eyes, leading to eye symptoms such as redness and irritation.

Regardless of the type, many common rosacea triggers, like spicy foods, cold temperatures, and sun exposure, can worsen the condition. Selecting the best hair color for your skin can help balance the effects of rosacea flare-ups, making your complexion appear more harmonious.

No one knows the exact cause of rosacea! And since it can take a long time to sort out the lifestyle factors involved, the quick things like hair color that you can do to improve the appearance of rosacea help a lot. 

A Personal Story: Why Red Hair Was My Worst Enemy

(I know I complain about this constantly on this blog. I am sorry. It was so bad.)

For about five years in the mid-late 00s, I went to a hairstylist I loved, who insisted that I needed red hair to “warm me up.” He believed the orangey-red tones would brighten my complexion. But with my rosacea-prone skin and fair skin tone, I ended up looking redder, even when I wasn’t experiencing a flare-up. The red dye made my skin’s redness louder and more pronounced, and I didn’t feel like myself.

It wasn’t until I switched back to a medium cool brown, a shade better suited for my cool undertones, that I saw a significant improvement in my facial redness. This change, combined with medical treatments like laser therapy for the small blood vessels, made the biggest difference in reducing the appearance of my rosacea symptoms.

Color Analysis: Your Best Hair Color Will Reduce Redness

One of the most effective treatments for reducing the look of rosacea through your hair color is understanding color analysis. This method looks at your skin color, eye color, and natural hair color to determine which hues will suit you best. When you select a shade that complements your undertones, you can neutralize facial redness, minimizing the impact of your rosacea symptoms.

If you have cool undertones (often seen with blue, pink, or red hues in your skin), cooler hair shades will work to counteract your skin’s natural redness. Those with warm skin tones (yellow, peach, or golden hues) should opt for warm hair colors. The key is selecting a shade that blends harmoniously with your skin, not against it. This minimizes the risk of enhancing your rosacea-prone skin and avoids emphasizing facial redness.

Not All Rosacea Sufferers Are Summers (But A Lot of Us Are)

When diving into color analysis, many rosacea sufferers fall into the Summer season, characterized by cool, muted tones. Summers tend to have cool, pinkish undertones, which makes them prone to redness and rosacea flare-ups. Cool, ashy shades like ash blonde, soft beige, and cool-toned light brown can minimize skin redness and provide a natural balance.

A lot of the information out there online about color analysis will tell you that if you have pinkness in your skin, you’re a summer or winter. 

And it’s probably true that rosacea shows through on us cool seasons the most strongly! That is, the same amount of rosacea will look worse or pinker on a summer or winter, because there’s less warmth to tone it down. And a “classic” white summer will be pale. (I’ve written about making the summer season more inclusive of deeper skin tones here!) 

Often that rosacea pinkness is strong enough to show up through a warm-toned season. So, a summer with rosacea might show up earlier or appear more severe, but that doesn’t mean every person with rosacea is a summer! Some of the pinkness in an autumn might be neutralized or cancelled out. But it’ll show eventually, if the condition gets severe enough. 

This isn’t conclusive at all as far as what color season you, personally, are. But if you’ve assumed that you’re a summer based on pinkness in your skin, I’ll encourage you to double-check! 

For me personally, there’s little pinkness in the skin away from my face, but I have pronounced blue tones. (I wrote about adding coolness to my foundation as a soft summer here!). If you look at your wrist and see warmth, you probably aren’t a summer even if you have pinkness in your face. 

How to Identify Your Color Season

To select the best hair color for your rosacea, start by identifying your color season:

• Examine your skin’s undertone: Do you see more cool hues (pink, blue) or warm hues (yellow, peach)? If you have rosacea, you should be looking beyond your face and your rosacea-effected areas. 
• Check your natural hair color: Does it have golden or ashy tones? When it lightens in the sun, does it pull towards red, golden, or just a lighter ash? (Chemically lightened hair will pull yellow or orange regardless of your undertone.)
• Look at your eye color: Cool-toned individuals with light eyes often have blue or green eyes, while warm-toned people may have hazel eyes or amber eyes. Brown eyes may have a pronounced warmth regardless of their depth of color. 
• Test with clothing: Hold different colored fabrics near your face and see which colors make your skin look more even and which emphasize your rosacea symptoms, or look into the apps that will superimpose color schemes onto your face!

 This analysis can help you select a shade that reduces the appearance of rosacea flare-ups rather than enhancing them. If you’re feeling really stuck, I can’t speak highly enough of the color analysis subreddit! Almost every “omg duh” moment I have ever had about my color season came from them. 

If you’re cool and your dyed hair is starting to pull warm, here’s my guide to using toner to correct warm tones! 

Selecting Your Contrast Level

Another crucial factor is your contrast level. High-contrast individuals (think fair skin with dark hair) tend to look best with bold hair colors that create a strong contrast with their skin. Meanwhile, low-contrast individuals, who have softer features, are flattered by more subtle shades.

For rosacea sufferers, keeping your contrast level in check is key. If you’re naturally high contrast (like a Winter), dramatic colors like cool dark brown or platinum blonde will work. Low-contrast individuals, like Summers, will benefit from softer shades such as ash blonde or soft brown, which help minimize the appearance of rosacea.

That means that if you nailed your cool undertones but went for platimum blond, you’re still in your season but out of your contrast level. 

I know that I’ve rambled on about “we should all pick whatever colors we like” and “color theory is not a life sentence”! But honestly: if you’re insecure about redness in your skin, just try a color within 1-2 shades of your natural hair color. You might be really surprised at how much it improves the redness. 

For me, that cool medium brown is actually a shade or two darker than my natural hair. But every time, without fail, I step out of the shower and I’m shocked at how clear my skin looks. 

Finding Your Best Hair Color for Rosacea 

Managing rosacea, a chronic skin condition, can feel overwhelming, but the best hair color for rosacea can help soften the look of facial redness and minimize rosacea flare-ups. Whether you’re a cool-toned Summer or a warm-toned Autumn, understanding your color season and contrast level can help you choose a hair color that enhances your natural features. 

Working within your color season — for rosacea patients or anybody — is the easiest way to immediately improve how your rosacea looks. No green tint primer, no expensive laser resurfacing, no oral medications or anything that takes a long time. You might do all that stuff in your rosacea journey, but if you need your skin to look better, like, tomorrow…a hair color aligned with your season will show huge improvements quickly!