Why Is Everyone Going Brunette?

Warming, feel-good colors like chocolate milk, gingerbread and sable will be big in 2022, stylists say.

In the last few months, Hailey Bieber, Billie Eilish, Florence Pugh, Dove Cameron and Gigi Hadid, among other celebs, have taken their manes deeper and darker. On TikTok, blond hair was declared “cheugy,” in the neologism of Gen Z. Slews of us, it seems, are yielding to an urge to go brunette.

This new spin on darker, more lustrous hair appears to be spurred in some part by the craving for change that came in the wake of the pandemic, when many people got to embrace their natural color in a good way.

“There’s definitely been a change in attitude as I see clients transition to darker, more luxurious hues,” said the colorist Sharon Dorram of Sharon Dorram Color at Sally Hershberger on the Upper East Side. “Brunette shades tend to create a more mysterious vibe, so total transformations by blondes have been extremely trendy. It’s similar to trying on another personality.”