Most makeup artists and lovers of beauty products associate contouring with makeup. The technique is helpful in framing, defining and highlighting the face's best features and there are various techniques for this, according to Refinery 29.
But there's an emerging technique for shading and highlighting that doesn't involve the face. Contouring may now be applied to the hair, and just like makeup, it also helps enhance the face's best features.
"Hair contouring uses freehand coloring and highlighting to enhance face shapes. Highlighting and shading certain parts of the hair can create the illusion of a different face shape, depending on what you want to accentuate. Just like the makeup technique, light shades are for highlighting and darker shades are for creating a shadow effect," said colorist Nick Penna, via Allure.
Makeup contouring is different with every person, and the same is true for hair contouring as there are considerations like "unique hair type and natural color, facial features, skin tone, makeup routine, clothing choice, lifestyle," according to stylist and colorist Adam McIntosh, via Get The Gloss.
The term "hair contouring" is new, but the technique is not. The process is simply a freehand style for highlighting, but stylists strategically pick the spots to enhance the person's features, according to Cosmopolitan.
Take a look at some photos of women who have had hair contours:
A photo posted by Estilove (@estilove_) on Sep 7, 2015 at 7:28pm PDT
A photo posted by Samuel Brampton (@bramptonhair) on Aug 23, 2015 at 8:03am PDT
A photo posted by ♉️Michela Picone (@mikyemi1) on Jul 10, 2015 at 3:07pm PDT
