The Basics of Brown

Usually for eyebrows we want a shade of brown (light, medium, or dark) - so when we have a color too far off the preferred brown spectrum we need to alter it.

Based off our complementary colors, the following would be true:

To correct Red brows, use Green.

To correct Blue brows, use Orange.

To correct Purple brows, use Yellow.

The inverse of each of these is also true!

For a Green brow, you would want to neutralize it with Red.

In permanent cosmetics we most commonly see colors that have faded to orange/red (warm) or blue/grey (cool).

The intensity of the warm or cool tone will vary greatly, so your correction plan will need to be adjusted as well.

You can neutralize a color more or less by the proportion of the complementary color that you use, for example if you have an orange-red brow that you still want some warmth to remain you would use less green tone to correct it, that way you don’t cancel out all the red.

Let's see how proportions affect creating brown!

You can create different shades of brown by changing how much green or red is in your mix – the more red, the warmer the brown, the more green, the cooler the brown.

Having a larger proportion of blue will create a more cool, grey brown, but when we add a larger proportion of orange we move over into a warm brown.