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Step 1
Decide whether your skin tone is a cool shade or a warm shade. Most olive and brown complexions will fall under the warm category, while darker shades with blue or ruddy undertones will be cool skin tones. You'll want to choose vastly different colors for your highlights depending on whether your complexion is cool or warm.
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Step 2
Choose shades that will compliment or balance the warmth or coolness in your complexion. If you have a warm skin tone, you will look better in cooler highlights because it keeps you from looking like you have a permanent flush or fever. If you have a cool skin tones, on the other hand, you will want to choose warmer colors to prevent looking like a cadaver.
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Step 3
Pick a highlight palette that ranges from two to three shades lighter or darker than the main color of your hair. If you choose colors beyond this range, it will look as if you have stripes in your hair instead of natural-looking highlights.
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Step 4
Select a highlight shade that matches your skin color as precisely as you can if you want to add volume along with your highlights. Though this doesn't physically provide you with volume it will give the illusion of it since your scalp will now blend into your hair color.
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Step 5
Shy away from brighter, bolder colors if you have a warm complexion. Though these colors have had some success on people with warm complexions, they have much more impact on those with cooler complexions, since it creates a stronger contrast for the bright colors.
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Step 6
Determine whether your particular complexion may have unusual undertones. Everyone's complexion is different, so while it is easy to say whether you have a cool complexion or a warm complexion, you may actually have some qualities that will suggest unconventional shades for your hair. For example, if you have a warm complexion with cool blue eyes, you have been blessed with the ability to choose from the cooler spectrum or warmer shades. If you have golden undertones with a cool complexion then you'll want to stick near the cooler shades to tone down the gold and avoid looking jaundiced.
