Finding Hair Ideas for Your Style Type: What to Google

Most of us go to the internet to get hairstyle ideas. But how can you zero in on the best hair for your style type? Some of us aren't sure how to go about searching. 

You'll want to do a Google image search, of course. Here are some specific search strings I suggest you use to find visual inspiration for your style type's best hair. I use some search operators in my search strings, such as   -   and   OR  , so try pasting the exact search string. 

(Google recently removed some of its most helpful image search tools, such as the ability to get only faces as search results. To get this and other tools back, do an advanced image search here. )

​Romantic


    hair glamorous long  -wig -extensions

(The minus signs tell Google terms to exclude. If you're doing an advanced search, you can just type "wig" and "extensions" into the field for words you want to exclude.)

Other Romantic keywords to try:  curls   full   sexy

​Ethereal

    mermaid waves

Other Ethereal keywords to try:  flowy   long   curls
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Ingenue

hair neat curls medium  "little girl" -frizz -wild​

Other Ingenue keywords to try:  sweet  girlish  ringlets

(I know it may seem odd, as an adult Ingenue, to search for pictures of little girls as hair inspiration. But many of the best pics online of Ingenue hair are pics of little girls.)  


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Classic

    hair mature medium  

Also, this one works well:

    hair tv anchor
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​Other Classic keywords to try:  elegant   coiffed  "first lady"

Natural

    hair long layers shag OR wild

Other Natural keywords to try:  natural  mane  messy


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Dramatic

   hair sleek

Other Dramatic terms to try: "slicked back" futuristic  -men 


Gamine

    hair short boyish

Other Gamine keywords to try:  spunky  tomboy


You may have noticed that these search results are mostly white ladies.  :-/  That's obviously not helpful if you're a WOC with a specific hair texture!  If you want hair styles specifically for women of color with specific hair textures,  try adding, for example, "african american" or "asian" to your search string. 

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If you're a blend of two or more core types, try searching for a few key terms from each core type.

For example, for Romantic-Dramatic-Classic, I used "glamorous" for Romantic, " sleek" for Dramatic, and "elegant for Classic. Here was my search string:

hair glamorous sleek elegant

 I got some pretty good RDC ideas:

I'm an Ethereal Natural.  When I combine Natural and Ethereal search terms, I get my favorite hair for myself: 


    hair layers long curls
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​My best hair has Ethereal's mermaid curls, but Natural's layers and wildness.


Tip: if your hair has a particular texture that's non-negotiable, try adding that to your search string. For example, if you're predominantly Ethereal but you have straight hair, try searching 

    straight hair long mermaid

(If you don't want all the dyed hair results for 'mermaid', try adding this to the end of the search string:  -dye  -ombre  -pink  -blue)


Do you know some search terms that have worked well for your style type? Please share them in the comments!

Not sure of your style type? Try the Style Identity Calculator, or consider a Virtual Analysis. 




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A version of this article was first posted in December of 2018.