Golds, Coppers, Reds and Mahoganies: The Warm Side of the Life Color Plus Chart

Fifty-one variants sit in the warm families — gold, copper, mahogany and red — plus sixteen more in the mat browns. It is the largest part of the range and the part where the doubled-digit convention earns its keep, because warmth is the tone clients most often want turned up.

The four warm families

Counts from the live variant list. All £3.49.

Where a family stops is as informative as where it starts. Copper ends at depth 8 and red at depth 8 — because a genuinely light copper or red is not a permanent-colour job, it is a lift-then-tone job. Trying to reach a level 9 copper straight out of a tube is a common way to be disappointed; the honest route is lifting first and placing the tone afterwards.

Gold — the biggest family, and the most useful

Twenty shades, spanning every depth from 4 to 10. Gold is the range's most-used reflect for a simple reason: it flatters, and it is what most clients mean when they say they want their colour to "look warmer" or "not so flat".

The secondaries are where it gets useful:

• .31 (5.31, 6.31) — gold with an ash behind it. Warmth that stays controlled, for a client who wants richness without brass.
• .32 (6.32) — gold with violet. Cooler again.
• .33 (7.33, 8.33, 9.33) — intensified gold. The doubled digit.
• .34 and .35 (6.34, 8.34, 10.34, 4.35, 5.35, 6.35) — gold leaning copper, and gold leaning mahogany.

That 6.35 is worth remembering — it is the shade the manufacturer uses in its own worked example for the heavy-white protocol, mixed half-and-half with 6.0. See the grey coverage guide.

Copper — where the doubling matters most

Fourteen shades from depth 4 to 8, and this family shows the intensity convention at its clearest:

The rest of the family layers a secondary on: .43 copper-gold (5.43, 6.43, 7.43), .45 copper-mahogany (6.45, 7.45, 8.45), .46 copper-red (6.46, 7.46). Reading left to right — dominant first, modifier second — tells you which way each will pull.

Red, and the triple six

Nine shades, depths 5 to 8, and one of them is unusual enough to point out: 6.666.

Three repeated digits is the strongest intensity signal in the range. Where 6.6 would be a red and 6.66 an intense red, the 6.666 is the most saturated red Life Color Plus offers. If you do vivid red work, that is the tube.

The rest run .62 red-violet (5.62, 6.62, 7.62), .64 red-copper (6.64, 7.64) and .66 intense red (6.66, 7.66, 8.66). Red-violet holds cooler and tends to fade less orange; red-copper is brighter and warmer from the start.

Mahogany — the small family with a specific job

Eight shades, and a distribution worth noticing: 4.5, 4.52, 5.5, 5.52, 6.5, 6.52 clustered at the dark end, then a jump to 9.5 and 10.5.

Mahogany is red-violet rather than red-orange — it reads as depth and richness rather than brightness. That is why it sits mostly on the brunette depths, where it gives brown hair dimension without turning it copper. The two pale outliers at 9 and 10 are doing a different job entirely: warmth on a blonde without gold.

The mat browns, which are not warm at all

Sixteen shades carry a .7 reflect — 4.77, 5.7, 5.71, 5.77, 6.7, 6.71, 6.77, 7.7, 7.71, 7.72, 7.77, 8.7, 9.7, 9.72, 10.7, 10.72 — and they belong in this article only because they are easy to mistake for a warm brown.

They are the opposite. Mat tones counter warmth, which makes them the family to reach for on a client whose hair persistently pulls red or orange through the mid-lengths. The doubled .77 shades (4.77, 5.77, 6.77, 7.77) are the intensified version, and they are genuinely useful on stubbornly warm brunettes.

Using a .7 expecting a warm chocolate brown is a predictable disappointment. If warm brown is the goal, that is a gold or a mahogany at a brunette depth.

One rule for the whole warm side

Warmth is the tone hair gives up most reluctantly and holds most visibly — which cuts both ways. It means a warm result is usually achievable, and it means the client's own underlying pigment is working with you rather than against you.

It also means the failure mode is nearly always too much rather than too little. If you are unsure between a shade and its doubled version, start with the single digit — you can intensify at the next appointment, and a client who found their copper too much does not come back to be corrected. The correctors exist for pushing a formula when you need to.

The shade range in depth — part 3 of 5.
Previously: ← The ash series
Next: The 900 and 12 series →

Shade availability and prices as published at the time of writing. Professional product for salon use only.