This Hair Colour Will Be Everywhere Next Year, Say Stylists

We're braver and bolder with our hair colour than ever before, seasonally experimenting with navy blues, bubblegum pinks, and sunset oranges. Where bright colours and daring shades were once the preserve of underground subcultures, now you'd be hard-pressed to walk down a London high street without seeing a flash of colourful tresses.

According to the 2017 L’Oréal Professionnel Survey, a quarter of women said they were now more likely to try a bold or pastel hair colour than they were a year ago – an indication of how much has changed in our approach to hair.

Always on the lookout for the next way to refresh our locks, whether that means updating our balayage for autumn or trying a new colour technique, we're naturally looking ahead to the trends that will define hair colour in 2018.

Jack Howard, a resident mega stylist at Knightsbridge salon Paul Edmonds, tells us the future is metallics, both silver and gold. "We're beginning to see a huge increase in guests asking for metallic-inspired colour in the salon. I think that this is partly due to the transition of the trend from glossy finishes to metallic on the catwalk," he explains. "We’ve also seen the metallic element continued into makeup looks."

While you may be dazzled by the beauty industry's offering of shimmering, iridescent makeup this season, one scroll through Instagram – where #SilverHair has over one million posts and counting – proves that the high-shine effect has reached our hair, too.

Think metallics sound a little out there? Just like the makeup we're wearing, this trend is super wearable. "What's the point in developing a colour if it's not going to be used in salon? It's not going to have a relevance," Josh Wood, premier colourist and celebrity stylist, says. "I think that's one way hair colour is becoming a lot more like makeup. You're able to dial your colour up or down, be one colour for a night or another for a couple of weeks."

Josh, too, is touting metallic hair for 2018. Launching six new Shades EQ colours with global haircare giant Redken, he reveals a polished silver and a medium grey steel. "I'm working with people who are celebrating their natural grey, but at the same time, 20-year-olds are coming into the salon wanting to be bleached with grey applied on top," he explains. "Before, grey was never a colour – it was either a background or an accent. I love the idea that you can create a multi-tone of greys, with different hues. We're getting more sophisticated with it."

It's brilliant for every age, but every hair type? Jack, who developed L'Oréal Professionnel's Metals by Majirel permanent hair colour collection, an in-salon service that promises transformative shine, assures us it's for all hair types and textures: "It's important to have a thorough consultation with your colourist before your appointment to determine your desired shade and the journey that you may need to take in order to get to the final look."

If all-out silver sounds too bold a first step, the Majirel Metals can actually be used as a glaze to add shine to existing colour, too. The hyper-reflective gloss can add a metallic impact to copper, brunette and blonde hair that lasts for up to four weeks, or up to six if used as an all-over silver. It looks like shimmer's here to stay, folks. Shine on you crazy diamond.

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