Celebrities love to play with their hair: dyes, extensions, bright and bold wigs. The red carpets of the past few years have taught us that intense hair color isn't going anywhere. If you love “mermaid hair” and other high-intensity hair trends, use this list as inspiration for your next salon visit.

Natural brunette Kendall Jenner will be several shades lighter at the 2024 Academy Museum Gala. This shade is a warm golden color with a bit of natural darkness at the base. She debuted this “butter blonde” at New York Fashion Week, which (while perhaps not as intense as others on this list) probably required a few hours in the salon.

For the Balmain Womenswear Fall/Winter 2022/2023 show, Serena Williams abandoned her usual dark color for a shorter wig that was white blonde with strawberry blonde nuances throughout. The pinkish tints added dimension and surprise, while the dark roots matched her brows and lashes.

Kristen Stewart loves to add a playful touch to the most ordinary yellow blonde. This is from the 2022 Cannes Film Festival photocall for “Future Crimes,” where her extended hair looks almost extremely ombre.

Ellie Goulding has increased the intensity of the color wheel to create an almost orangey yellow. This is from the 2015 MTV EMAs, and the shade is so bold (even balanced by the darker roots) that it looks almost lemony in a really clean sense.

Even as a wig, Zendaya's “Joan of Arc” hair at the 2018 Met Gala was strikingly memorable (and fitting for the “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination” theme). That rich auburn color is a red-carpet favorite, thanks to the coppery highlights.

Amandla Stenberg shows how rich colors can be used as highlights. In this case, they are scattered throughout her braids, as are brown and blonde colors. What I like best is that this is actually multiple colors, with the purples and pinks complementing each other beautifully.

At first, this feels like a touch of light blue on Chloe Norgaard's front, but in fact the rest of her hair is a rich gray silver. It's a softer, more subtle version of “mermaid” hair, and the more you look at it, the cooler it becomes.

If you like edgy hair, let Maisie Williams be one of your style inspirations. This versatile pink is bright in places, soft in others, and almost blonde in a few places, like an upgraded version of a home dye.

Admittedly, this photo is not from the red carpet, but Megan Fox has had deep cherry red hair all period, from events to street style (as seen here). She kept it long enough for the dark roots to start growing out, giving even the most dramatic shades a “lived-in” look.

“Could there have been a more mermaid-like hair color?” this is from the 2012 Saint Vintage “Love Tour,” and Jamie King's hair is deceptively simple. It appears to be a simple ombre, but closer inspection reveals a variety of colors mixed together. It takes a lot of skill to get the balance and dimensionality right.

Katy Perry is no stranger to wild hair colors, and we can see that she has tried almost every shade in her long career. This was the case at the premiere of Katy Perry in 2012: the rich royal purple stands out especially because it is integrated with her dark hair.

Hilary Duff has shown a willingness to experiment with her hair color. An example is the all-blue color at the premiere of Younger in 2015. Her hairstylist, Amber Maynard, explained that it was a temporary dye (lasting about a month) applied to create an almost teal mermaid-like look.

Ice Spice is well known for her bright orange curls on the red carpet. So this sleek, straight version is a nice alternative and a wig she should wear more often. Contrasted with the right matte makeup, the hair would appear brighter and more radiant.

Dip-dye hair has been around for a while, but the extreme combination of dark and blonde hair is a real sticking point. Evan Rachel Wood usually wears her hair blonde or dark brown (and this hairstyle combines both in one look). Also, the roots are visible, which adds another dimension to the look.

Lil Kim's look at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards is now legendary (thanks to a very strategically deployed pastie), but not enough credit is given to her very lavender wig. Attempts at red carpet hairstyles became a more routine phenomenon in the late 90s, and rappers were at the forefront.

Britney Spears appeared at the 2015 Teen Choice Awards to the delight of her fans, thanks to her colorful mermaid hair. She had purple tips for a while, but added a nice transitional blue for the ceremony and was compared to a crayon crayon (in a good way.)

There are certainly more vivid pinks on this list, but what's great about this color by Constance Wu is that it took so much skill to achieve it. This is from the premiere of A Wrinkle In Time, but if your natural hair color is quite dark, it takes a lot to achieve such a beautiful pastel pink (blonde at the ends).

The 2000 VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards were the perfect place for rapper Eve to debut her hot pink hue (with matching lips.) In the Y2K era, celebrities really got bold, debuting bright colors and quickly establishing themselves as fashion forward The short hair made it easier to wear color. Short hair also meant that colors could be changed more easily and quickly.

Model Iskra Lawrence shows off the perfect silver hair color (she is a brand ambassador for L'Oréal Paris' Colorista Paint in #Silver Grey). This shade is a shade of blue, which is important to make hair look brighter.

Now, this is multi-dimensional hair. The dark roots and dark blue under layers make the hair look longer and thicker and eye-catching. Winnie Harlow is attending the DKNY 30th anniversary party in 2019, which feels like the right place for this color.

Here model and journalist Eileen Kim, attending the Balmain show for the Spring/Summer 2018 Paris Fashion Week Womenswear, demonstrates how many shades can be put into one hairstyle. In all, we see lavender, mauve, lilac, orchid, and violet.

It is the infamous hairstyle: Christina Aguilera's “skank” highlights, platinum blonde hair with splashes of black. This was at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards.

Lady Gaga has said that her entire career is a tribute to David Bowie, which is a fairly direct reference (this is the 2016 Grammy Awards). Her hair is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a wig, but Gaga has turned her actual hair red and orange many times in her career. It may be hard to maintain this particular shade.

Helen Mirren, red carpet goddess at her best, has a playful red carpet style. And there is no more playful style. She attended the premiere of “Jeanne du Barry 2023” in Cannes.

Some roots are visible, and some Dua Lipa is showing here. This is the 2020 Grammy Awards, and her “Peace Hair” is very nostalgic for the hairstyles of the '90s, but keeps it modern with extreme color contrasts and slicked-back styling.

Cyndi Lauper has said that dying her hair various colors is a matter of self-expression (showing her “true colors,” if you will). This is from the 1995 Emmy Awards, with purple and bright yellow throughout. The modern concept of intensely dyed hair on the red carpet owes much to her.

A more modern iteration of this type of extreme hair dyeing is Billie Eilish's neon green roots. If you look closely, you can see a bit of green throughout her hair as well.

Rihanna says her copper hair is one of the coolest hair colors she's tried (although her black short pixie is apparently her favorite). This cherry red is from 2010 and even richer. At the time, Singer said she almost overdid it and rubbed it on her pillow.

Cardi B loves bold wigs, and none more bold than this rainbow. There are five pastel colors in all. With similar colors on her lips and thick, chunky jewelry (which really reflects the colors in a pretty way), she wisely chose to lean in. Fancy with a topknot.

This is blue. Singer-songwriter and actor Sky Ferreira plays with a myriad of blue hues, from sky blue to indigo. And (though it can be hard to tell), at least some of those colors look like her natural hair.

Slow clap for Georgia May Jagger. This was at the Fashion Awards 2018 in London, where she said it was one of her favorite looks: “There was a lot, but just the right amount.” It was the right decision here to really lean into maximalism.

I don't know if anyone will ever surpass Pink's Pink Spike. This is the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. I don't know how permanent that hair dye was, but it was completely typical of the singer. Also, in a totally bossy move, she didn't match the rest of her outfit to it.