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If you find that your skin still looks drab even after you’ve cycled through two or three favorite foundations and tried a couple of new ones, the culprit may not be your makeup — it could be your hair color.

“If your color has faded,” says Beverly Hills, CA-based colorist Stuart Gavert of the Gavert Atelier salon, “it’s not going to reflect light in the same way — and that can leave your skin looking dull. Likewise, if your color has turned brassy, that can cause your complexion to appear overly pink or ruddy.”

Try touching up your roots by applying an allover hair glaze, which will add a much-needed dose of shine. Then have your colorist apply a one-step corrective toner, which neutralizes brassy tones and revitalizes color. And voilà! Your old reliable foundation is imparting its reliable glow once again.

Skin still looking blah? It might be time to consider a warmer, more golden hair color. “Our skin tone is always changing,” says Gavert, “and after about age 35, we may notice that it’s become more yellow. Ashy hair tones will only accentuate this. Platinum blond or jet black [hair color] may have worked when you were 25, but it’s unlikely it’s still flattering when you’re 40.”

Another Rx: highlights. Says Gavert, “Painting on just four strands of highlights in the free-form French technique known as baliage, which creates natural-looking highlights, can be done right over the shampoo bowl [at the salon] and will perk up your skin dramatically.” When it comes to highlights, less really is more. “Too much brightness framing your face and you’ll be right back where you started,” Gavert says, “looking washed out.”