What is a hair colour level?
A hair colour level is a number from 1 to 10 that describes how light or dark hair is, whatever its tone. Level 1 is black, level 4 is a medium brown, level 7 is a medium blonde and level 10 is the lightest blonde. Salons and hair colour brands use the scale to plan colour, because it lets them talk about lightness separately from tone.
The scale is a convention rather than a measurement, so brands draw and name the steps a little differently. Treat the numbers here as a common reference, not as a match for any one brand’s chart.
This tool estimates your level from a photo. It runs in your browser, your photo is read on your device and never uploaded, and the result is a cosmetic estimate from one photo.
Why hair is the colour it is
Hair colour comes from a pigment called melanin. MedlinePlus Genetics explains that an abundance of one type, eumelanin, gives people black or brown hair, and an abundance of another type, pheomelanin, gives people red hair. Black hair has a large amount of eumelanin, brown hair a moderate amount, and blond hair very little. Levels are a way of describing that range of lightness in everyday terms.
How the level finder reads your photo
When you start, a small hair model downloads to your browser. It marks which pixels of your photo are hair. The tool then measures the colour of those pixels in a colour space called CIE Lab, where L* is lightness from 0 (black) to 100 (white). It ignores the brightest 8 percent of hair pixels, which are usually shine and not colour, and takes the middle value of the rest.
That lightness is matched to a level, and the tint of the colour gives the tone. The result is drawn back on your photo: the hair that was read is tinted, and a swatch shows the colour found, so you can check by eye that it read your hair and not your background.
The model was made by Google’s MediaPipe team for photo effects and augmented reality, not for medical or professional colour matching.
The levels, from 1 to 10
| Level | Name | Lightness (L*, 0 black to 100 white) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black | Under 10 |
| 2 | Darkest brown | 10 to 18 |
| 3 | Dark brown | 18 to 26 |
| 4 | Medium brown | 26 to 34 |
| 5 | Light brown | 34 to 42 |
| 6 | Dark blonde | 42 to 50 |
| 7 | Medium blonde | 50 to 58 |
| 8 | Light blonde | 58 to 66 |
| 9 | Very light blonde | 66 to 74 |
| 10 | Lightest blonde | 74 or more |
These bands are ours, written for this tool and tuned on illustrative portraits. They are rules of thumb and not an industry standard. Our hair colour levels chart explains the scale in more detail.
Warm, cool or neutral: what the tone means
Tone is the colour cast of your hair once lightness is set aside. The tool reports one of three, or says it cannot tell.
| Tone | What the tool sees |
|---|---|
| Warm | A clear golden, copper or red cast |
| Cool | A bluish or ash cast |
| Neutral | Little colour cast, so neither warm nor cool |
| Too dark to judge | Lightness under 12, where a photo carries too little colour to tell |
Very dark hair has so little colour in a photo that warm and cool cannot be separated reliably. The tool says so instead of guessing.
Why a photo gives a range and not one number
The same hair looks lighter in bright daylight and darker under a warm indoor bulb. Camera exposure, white balance and how much hair is in shadow all move the reading. So the tool shows the closest level and the range your hair could fall in once light shifts it by about 4 points of lightness either way, which is usually one level on each side.
For the most consistent reading, use even daylight from a window, no flash, and the same spot each time.
Natural level or dyed level?
The tool reads the colour your hair has now. Dyed hair reads as its dyed colour, bleached hair as its bleached colour and hair with grey in it reads a little lighter than the pigmented hair around it. It cannot tell you what your natural colour was, or how much grey you have.
If you are planning a colour change, our hair colour try-on previews a shade on the same photo.
How to take the photo
- Use even daylight from a window, with the light in front of you. Skip the flash.
- Keep your hair clear of dark clothing and dark backgrounds, which the model can confuse with hair.
- Show your hair clearly. Your face does not have to be in the photo.
- Stay out of direct sun, which puts bright reflections on the hair.
- Take the photo or upload one, and wait a few seconds.
If the tool cannot read your photo, it tells you why: not enough hair in the frame, a photo that is too dark, or bright reflections.
What one photo cannot tell you
A photo gives a lightness and a tone under one light. It cannot give your natural colour, how much grey you have, or what a dye will do to your hair. It is not a lab measurement or professional colour advice.
Watch it over time in the HairLens app
The HairLens app tracks grey coverage over time and scores moisture and breakage from your photos, so colour-treated hair is looked after as well as measured.