Also described as: mousy brown hair, light chestnut
A pale-to-mid brown, often with visible warm or ashy variation.
typical range
An illustrative approximation, not a fixed definition.
Can lean warm (golden) or cool (ashy) — genuinely variable within this category.
Frequently shows natural blonde-toned highlights.
Hair colour, including grey and white hair, is not a reliable indicator of age and is never presented here as something to correct — it's one more colour to plan around, the same as any other.
Styling ideas below are optional and editorial — never rules, and never a claim that one colour choice is objectively correct for anyone.
Light brown hair has a modest amount of brown eumelanin, so each strand is partly translucent. Much of the light that enters the fibre is carried along it and bounced back out, and that internally reflected light, tinted by the pigment, dominates the colour. That makes light brown unusually sensitive to the light source: a warm lamp pushes it golden, north light or overcast sky pushes it towards ash, and midday sun adds glints close to blonde. It is also the shade where the difference between lengths bleached by years of sun and fresher growth near the scalp is easiest to see.
Light and shine: Because interior light matters so much, backlighting — sun behind the head — can make light brown hair glow at the edges, a halo effect that is much weaker on darker hair.
Sources: MedlinePlus Genetics: Is hair color determined by genetics?; Human hair color; Light Scattering from Human Hair Fibers (Marschner, Jensen, Cammarano, Worley & Hanrahan, SIGGRAPH 2003)