With Valentine’s Day swiftly approaching, we know you want to cater to all of your clients’ requests for that lovely, flattering shade of red. Experts at Mario Tricoci Hair Salons & Day Spas — John Gialluisi, creative director; Cheryl Santucci, beauty director; and Amber Edwards, nail director— offer these tips.

Hair: We’re not talking Rihanna or Lucille Ball. Today’s hottest reds are vibrant but are also natural and healthy looking. Women with light skin look best in copper and golden reds, while medium skin tones glow with a true red, and darker skin looks radiant with violets and deeper reds. And remember, the best reds have dimension to them; you want darker tones closer to the roots and lighter tones at the tips.

Lips: Once again, the secret is in your skin tone. Lighter, fair, and yellow undertone skin looks great with an orangey red, while cooler and olive skin tones can wear more of a range — from brownish reds to pink-reds. The right red will brighten the skin when the client is wearing nothing but foundation and it won’t make teeth look yellow. At Mario Tricoci, the salon offers a custom blended route, creating the perfect red while you wait. While some women want to balance a deep red lip with a dramatic eye, a major trend this year is to go “barely there” with the rest of your cosmetics to truly make your lips the focal point.

Nails: For a true red, these experts recommend Essie’s [www.essie.com] Forever Young or the deep, lacquered red Limited Addition, adding that vibrant and super shiny is trendy. And, of course, if you want a red to last long past Valentine’s Day, offer brush-on gel-polish manicures.

If it’s red nail art you’re after, NAILS offers a gallery of exclusively that in our Holiday Red-dy Nail Art feature. And to delve deeper into color theory and cosmetics, NAILS has this article for you.

(Photo by Michael Dar of Factor Photo) 

—Sree