‘It looked different in the photo’ is the sentence NSY Hair wrote this hair system color matching guide to help you avoid saying. Inside are the steps to take before ordering: request a swatch, compare it with your hair under several lights, and make the final call from what you see in hand.
Table of Contents
A Hair System Can Look Right on Every Product Page and Wrong in Your Bathroom Mirror
A product page freezes a color under one lighting setup, and the light in your bathroom varies from morning to night. This explains how a hair system can look right in the photo and wrong against your hairline in the mirror.
Buying online saves a trip to a store, and it also removes the chance to hold the color against your hair first. The steps below put that chance back.
Why a Photographed Color Looks Different Once It Reaches a Cloudy Northwest Bathroom
One photo can show two colors on two devices, and the room you view it in adds a third. A cloudy Northwest bathroom makes that third factor louder, because the light there is dim and seldom brightens, so small color errors are easy to miss.
The Lipstick Counter Teaches What a Product Photo Can’t
Most people shopping for lipstick try the shade on their skin before they commit, because a photo can’t say how it will look on them. Hair color behaves like that too. Your hair tone and lighting both alter what a product photo promised.
The counter works because the shade meets the person who will wear it. A swatch does that job for hair: hold it against your hair before placing an order, and any difference is visible while correcting it is easy. Both colors have to be in front of you at once for the comparison to mean anything.
Overcast Seattle and Portland Days Offer Buyers One Dim Light to Judge By
On a gray Seattle or Portland day, buyers who rely on daylight are judging by one dim light. A color judged under one dim light takes on that light’s bias, so a small difference in shade can vanish or look larger than it is.
With one light in play, nothing offers a second opinion on the shade. Overcast skies are common in Seattle and Portland, so buyers there meet this situation more often than buyers in sunnier cities.
Why a Swatch in Hand Beats a Photo, and What the Wait Buys
A swatch puts the color in your hand, next to your hair, in the light of your room, which a photo cannot do. Ordered separately, it adds postage and a delay, and the next two sections look at whether that is a fair price.
A Swatch Adds Shipping and a Wait, and Can Spare a Wrong-Color Surprise Later
Ordering a swatch separately means a shipping charge and a wait before the order goes in. Skipping it postpones any color problem until the system is in your hands, and dealing with it then involves more back-and-forth than the swatch ever would have.
Picture two buyers working from one product photo. The first orders a swatch, holds it against their hair, and spots a difference before the system is even ordered. The second finds that difference after the system is unpacked. One outlay is small and known, and the other is larger and less certain.
What a Swatch Can Show, and What It Cannot
A swatch shows one thing well: the color you are matching, held beside your hair in a bathroom mirror. It cannot show how that color looks over a whole piece, especially in blended shades where lighter and darker hairs mix together.
That makes the swatch a reference for the shade, and the color code describes the blend. How production blends colors is a topic for another article.
Hair System Color Matching Guide: The Swatch Goes First
Three steps come before any order: photograph your hair, read the color codes, and put a swatch in your hands. Each one lowers the odds of a surprise on delivery day. Together they replace a guess about the color with a comparison you can see.
Reference Photos Work Best When They Include Roots, Mid-Lengths, and Ends
Photograph your hair at the roots, mid-lengths, and ends before you order. A single photo describes only the spot it shows, and those spots can each hold a slightly different shade. Save all of them as the reference for your swatch comparison.
Picture a buyer who photographs only the roots and calls the color dark brown. The ends, photographed afterward, are visibly lighter, and a swatch matched to the roots no longer suits the head. Photographing roots, mid-lengths, and ends catches that before anything is ordered.
Color Codes Run From Dark to Light, and the Gray Codes Say How Much Gray Is Blended In
Generally, a bigger number on NSY Hair’s color chart means a lighter color: #1 is the darkest and #60 the lightest. In gray colors, the last two digits show how much gray hair is blended in, and an R after a number marks a color one shade lighter than the number before it.
Take #210 as an example. The 2 stands for the darkest brown, and the 10 means 10% gray hair blended in. Code #220 is that darkest brown with 20% gray hair blended in. The R in 4R marks medium brown one shade lighter. Read your reference photos against these rules, and the codes that fit your hair become easy to spot. The full chart sits on the page explaining how NSY Hair numbers its hair colors.
NSY Hair Sells Swatches Through a Product Link After a Chat or Email, With Free Shipping Only Alongside a System
Once you reach out by chat or email and buy through the product link NSY Hair designates, NSY Hair mails the swatch to you. If the swatch is the only item in the order, shipping is charged. If it joins a system order, shipping is free and the swatch goes out with the system.
NSY’s In-Hand Color Check works only when the swatch is in your hands before the system is ordered. A swatch added to a system order reaches you together with the system, which is too late to guide the order, so anyone who wants the comparison first buys the swatch separately and takes on the shipping charge.
Once the Swatch Is in Hand, Daylight, Warm Bulbs, and Cool Bulbs All Take a Turn
Once the swatch is in hand, the comparison begins. Daylight, warm bulbs, and cool bulbs each show a shade differently, so try all three before you decide. Start with daylight if the sky allows, then move to the lamps in your home.
Side-by-Side Comparison Works Best With Swatch and Hair in One Light at a Time
A fair comparison puts the swatch and your hair in one light at a time, which is why NSY Hair’s guide has buyers compare them under each of those lights in turn. Whatever difference appears can be pinned on the shade, because the lighting was fixed for that round.
Each light hides something different: warm bulbs can flatter a cooler shade, and cool bulbs can do the opposite. Mixing lights within a round blurs which one is responsible, so each round uses a single light.
Where Daylight Runs Dim, Indoor Bulbs Fill In the Comparison
Where daylight runs dim, as it often does on overcast Northwest days, indoor bulbs fill in the missing comparison. Try the lamps in your bathroom, bedroom, and office, and note whether the swatch and your hair look matched or drift apart under each.
Jot down what each light showed so the notes can guide your final pick. When one shade looks right under all of them, the next step is finding a shade in the catalog that matches the one you’ve tested.
Questions Buyers Raise While the Swatch Is in the Mail
How do I figure out which color code is mine before I place a custom order?
In my chair, I start with a good photo of your hair beside the chart, because a code is easier to read off a picture than to guess from memory. The darkest and lightest tones in it mark the range of codes to try.
The chart’s reading rules are short. On NSY Hair’s chart, a bigger number means a lighter color, and hair with visible gray points to the gray codes, whose last two digits give the blend. Reading the photo against those rules cuts the choice to a few codes.
Does knowing my color code lower the odds of a wrong-color order?
Yes, it lowers the odds, but I never treat a code as the last word on a color. A code hands me a short list of shades I can name, and a swatch held beside the hair does the rest of the work.
A code and a swatch do different jobs. Ordering from a code only means seeing the shade for the first time when the system is in hand, while a swatch held beside the hair beforehand shows whether the name matches. A code labels a shade, so it lowers the odds of a wrong order without replacing a side-by-side comparison.
How do I pick a base color to go with my scalp tone?
I look at the hairline and the part first, because those are the places where the base can be seen by other people. Judge your scalp tone there in daylight and under indoor bulbs, and the closer base color is easier to pick.
Skin tone is the reference here. A base color is judged against skin, and skin looks different from one light to the next, so the light-by-light comparison above applies to the base too. For the bigger picture, see how color choice relates to the other parts of placing an order.
My bathroom light is yellow and my office light is white, so which one do I trust?
I wouldn’t crown either bulb. Take the swatch and your hair under the yellow light, then under the white one, and note what each shows. If they match under both, you have your answer. It’s the comparison I’d want a client to make before ordering.
Each bulb tells part of the story. Each light is a witness, and a shade that matches in both is more dependable than one that matches in a single room. When the two lights show different results, the room where the piece will be worn most often is the better tiebreaker.
Can I skip the swatch if I need the piece soon?
You can skip it, and I won’t call that a mistake when time is short. What you give up is the first chance to see the color in your hands before anything is made. A swatch bundled into a system order is too late to guide that order, because NSY Hair ships the two together.
Skipping trades information for speed. Skipping saves the shipping charge and the wait. It also means the buyer is comparing hair with a picture of the color, so the device differences described earlier return. A buyer in a hurry can reduce that risk by photographing their hair in more than one light.