Pretty in Pink

Flamingo Hair Is the Prettiest Way to Go Pink This Summer

Are animals replacing food as hair-color inspo for 2018?
pink flamingo hair
Meg Schipani

With new hair colors on Instagram taking inspiration from food every day, it was about time a hairstylist moved onto drawing on animals as trend muses. Meg Schipani, a Maryland-based colorist featured in the very first edition of my column Five on Five, recently executed a beautiful pink dye job which she dubbed "flamingo hair." Like the long-legged bird, Schipani colored her client's hair with various shades of pink, and the final look is gorgeous.

Originally, Schipani's flamingo hair was supposed to have a pink-to-green ombré effect. However, the deep burgundy dye she painted onto her client's roots ran into the green when she rinsed out her hair with cold water. As a result, the red hue neutralized the green and turned it into a cool silver in some spots and lavender in others. "It was a happy accident," Schipani tells Allure. "I decided to leave it instead of reapplying the green because I loved it so much."

Before brushing on the colorful dyes, Schipani first had to lighten her client's hair, which was yellow and orange. Once she had a blonde canvas to work with, Schipani focused the aforementioned burgundy on her client's roots. Then, she alternated between a lilac-toned pink and coral on the middle section of her client's hair, which mimics the dimension of a flamingo's feathers. Next, she coated her client's ends in shamrock green.

Throughout the process, Schipani says she used the popular color-melting technique, which helps the vivid shades blend together without any lines of demarcation. In total, the flamingo hair look took Schipani four hours to complete.

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Inspired to make like a flamingo this summer? Schipani says, "It could be done on any hair type as long as it can be lifted to at least [golden blonde shade]." So if you're down to bleach your hair, get ready to be on the forefront of the animal-inspired hair-color trend