5 Summer Hair Colour Trends You’re About to See Everywhere

The first day of summer is just days away, and with the solstice on the horizon and the collective urge for reinvention in the air, the temptation to bleach, gloss, or tone is hitting hard. Call it seasonal restlessness, but switching up your shade is indeed an unspoken beauty rule of sorts, but we’re particularly intrigued by this year’s incoming class of summer hair colour trends.

Given the “recession hair” phenomenon making its rounds, we seem to be stepping into an era of low-maintenance styles and embracing the hair colours we were born with. A new look that’s easy on the wallet and the effort? Sign us up. To help forecast this season’s biggest hair colour trends, we tapped Carolyn Mila Shariff, master hair colour technician at Toronto’s Alibi Cutting Room salon—and the artiste behind some of Nelly Furtado’s most fabulous hair moments.

Ahead, five fresh colours for blondes, brunettes and redheads to try this summer—with inspiration photos you can send straight to your colourist included.

Fruit-red Locks

Leaning into beauty’s obsession with food-themed fads (read: blueberry milk nails and strawberry girl makeup), ‘tis the season for redheads to embrace apricot tones à la Lindsay Lohan. “It’s still in the copper family and it’s a little bit lighter, but it has more of a creamy pink undertone than a true copper,” explains Shariff. “If you’re already naturally blonde or you have blonde highlights, you can just tone your hair that shade, rather than dyeing your whole head copper,“she says, adding that once you commit to red dye, it’s a long road back. A toner, on the other hand, is the perfect way to test the waters—to flirt with the shade before deciding if you want to take it seriously.

For those with darker hair, however, Shariff suggests opting for a cherry cola-coloured gloss. Natural-looking with a reddish-purple hue, this low-maintenance treatment reflects beautifully in the sunlight. And, because it’s a temporary tint, you’ll be back to brunette by the fall.

Sunny Brunette

Are you even a brunette if you haven’t considered what you might look like as a blonde? Though brunettes of the past may have used the summer months to experiment with going dramatically lighter, Shariff tells me they’ll be embracing their natural brown hair this time around. Instead of committing to a major hair transformation, try experimenting with subtle highlights.

“The trick to that is keeping it all very blended with very soft hairlines, very tone on tone, but everything is warm,” she says. “Think of how, when you were a kid and you were out in the sun for the whole summer, and as a brunette, you had all those like sparkly bits going through it. That’s what this is.” Nostalgic brunette, if you will.

Summer-Lit Blonde

Like brunettes, Shariff predicts blondes will stick to darker, more low-maintenance hues than what we’ve seen in previous seasons. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t be bright!" she adds. Contrasting foregone ashy blonde trends, expect to see sunkissed shades of buttery blonde with more golden undertones come through in very-fine highlights all over the head for more of a natural look.

“Having a lot more of those blonde [highlights] does give it more of that warmth, and a more beachy feel,” says Shariff. “Because the sun quality in the summer is a lot brighter, this is the time that you can have more warmth in your hair.” Think Candice Swanepoel’s sunny strands (pictured above), or Addison Rae’s gold mane.

Grey Blending

Shariff is calling it: Grey blending is back again! The pandemic-era technique that involved seamlessly blending your greys into your natural hair to minimize contrast is this summer’s solution to covering your roots every month. One celebrity who does this trend exceptionally well? Sarah Jessica Parker, with her iconic head of curls.

“You can still have coloured hair, but now it’s adding blonde highlights or low lights to that hair, so that your grey hair still looks deliberate,” the colourist explains. In addition to having that “recession hair” quality of embracing your natural look, Shariff also finds this trend takes an important stance on pro-aging.“It’s part of an empowering movement of us [women] no longer fighting aging. Everyone’s ageing gracefully.”

Petal Tones

The rose-coloured 2023 summer of Barbie feels worlds away—but we may be in for another pink renaissance soon, and it’s starting with hair. “This can be as subtle as blondes going more champagne or cream that has more pink undertones to it, or as bold as tinting all of your highlights a pinky hue,” explains Shariff. You heard it here first; if you really want to play with fun colours this summer, think pink.