Living Coral Pantone Colour of the Year for Hair

How to do coral hair

Create Living Coral with IT&LY Hair Fashion.

Each year Pantone, the colour institute announce their colour of the year. It’s the colour they feel will not only be on trend but embodies the current mood globally. This time it is Living Coral. Pantone offer colour forecasting to a range of industries including interiors and fashion. The colour itself is a flat colour with a formula which translates neatly into print or production, however how will it work for hair?

Why Living Coral in the Words of Pantone.

“An animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge”, say Pantone.

Both a reaction to our need to take better care of the planet, something that IT&LY Hair Fashion aims to do with their green initiative and also an uplifting and optimistic shade for turbulent times. Living Coral is also a reminder that we spend a lot of our time looking at screens and not at the real world. Living Coral will almost mutate between orange and pink depending on your screen colour settings, suggesting that we should be inspired by life not just looking at our phones. The colour illustrates the blur between reality and an altered reality, something that the hairstylists are struggling with at the moment. Clients sometimes have unrealistic expectations brought on by a increasing amount of inspiration that is filtered or the process to achieve the look is well looked over.

Living Coral is Everywhere

Once you know the Pantone colour of the year it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e you will notice it everywhere and those stylists who have created coral looks before the announcement already have a head start and started tagging their looks on instagram to fit the trend not creating their looks to match.  If you want to see a range of looks pop  #livingcoral  or #livingcoralhair into Instagram search and a lovely wall of coral pictures should appear. At the time of writing this the livingcoralhair hashtag only has 200 posts. So if you do produce a look that matches why not get on that #hashtag. While #livingcoral has a massive eighty three thousand posts.  

What is the Colour?

The colour is a mid-shade of coral and a lovely vibrant pinky-orangey tone or rather not pink or orange but somewhere in between. Coral is not pink, orange, red, rose gold, copper or pale peach.

The Trends

However it’s not just that Pantone pick a colour and then that’s it, it’s a trend. Coral fits into the hair trend of “is it or isn’t is colour”. What do we mean by this? Well the vivids market and techniques have evolved, clients have access to lots of inspiration and they crave out of the ordinary colours, not just purple but smoky lilac or not just blue but dark navy blue. These are colours that you need to look twice at. With coral it’s not orange or pink but sits unusually and rather irreverently between the two.

The trend for seventies tones – the shops are full of shades of nudes, yellow, mustard and seventies style colour tones and those tones are coming through as a hair trend, living coral fits in with this trend too.

Last year a big trend was that of millennial pink,  a cool toned pink that once again you would have seen across a host of lifestyle products and hair. With this trend on the wane living coral has slipped into its shoes.

Pantone’s competitor Coloro have predicted a shade called Canteloupe will be the in shade for spring summer 2020 and so the peachy theme is set to continue.

Coloro trend colour for 2020 Cantaloupe

How to Interpret and Inspire Your Own Clients

Living Coral is deliciously and seductively interpretable for hair it lends itself to lots of clients with different hair requirements and as hair is dimensional not a flat fabric we suggest being inspired rather than literal. First and foremost those clients that love vibrant bold and colour. Therefore a straightforward all over version of this almost edible sugary coral. We would recommend our direct colour line Blossom,  noncommittal, fades true to tone and reportedly lasts longer than other direct colours our IT&LY stylists have tried. Those who have are in love.

living Coral Pantone colour of the year hair. Pink hair or peach hair.
Living Coral and Fuchsia hair by Pierre and James Salon
Stylist Natasha , Model Cinsy Tam

Using Blossom

It would be logical to reach for the Orange Tangerine Blossom shade but in actual fact mix a pastel pink (with a little Blossom Cotton Candy and lots of Clear Pasteliser) and add a dot yellow and orange and you’ll achieve a closer match to living coral. No client is the same so experiment with these shades. A more subtle version, create a wash of colour by mixing a little Fuchsia Cotton Candy Blossom with honey Riflessi and Blossom clear to create a peachy pink glaze for blond hair.


Hair by Lauren Cambell at L’Perfection Salon

L’Perfection’s Living Coral Formula

Root stretch using 6RU and 7R/RU Ultrared range from the Aquarely range, dragged through the ends with neutro then Blossom Fuschia Cotton Candy pastelised mid to ends. This formula has created a lovely multi tonal coral. We have some very talented fashion forward stylists using IT&LY Hair Fashion.

Some Other Options

For those who want a more subtle version start thinking more blush or coloro Canterloupe or blush. Use the SS series of colours in the Aquarely range to create a nod to each add in a little from the AF range. Our Senior Technician Linda O’reilly recommends shade 9AD on level ten blonde hair with a dot of 6P from the Aquarely range, this will produce a lovely peach. No more than a dot of 6P otherwise the colour will go a little too pink. If using Colorly2020 use a similar formula but instead use 9TN with a dot of 6P or SSR with a dot of 7P

For those brunettes balayage shades and a mixture of the new caramel and rose gold toners from the Oh My Blonde range will create a blush tone.

Whichever coral or blush tone you wish to create you will need to create a blond base. The base doesn’t need to be a level ten for coral but at least a nine. For a hint of coral or blush tone then go lighter. Coral will not fight with yellow though and is an easier vivid to wear and enjoy the fade. IT&LY Hair Fashion have a new range of lighteners that have just launched in time to use with this trend. Oh My Blonde features five different bleaches. That’s right five! That will allow you to create the best base and keep hair in top condition as they feature innovative &-Plex to maintain the hair structure. Oh My Blonde Iconic bleach lifts up to nine levels and leaves hair in great condition.

And Finally

As always we love to see how you are creating on trend looks with our colour and therefore if you do hashtag #livingcolourhair please also hashtag #itelyhairfashion so that we can follow your looks and do share your formulas with the IT&LY Hair Fashion community. And if you’d like to tag us directly at @italyhairuk