Brown Hair Color: Year's 20 Hottest Hairstyles

By Julyne Derrick, About.com Guide

Who says brown hair color is boring? A look at this photo gallery of my favorite brunette shades shows the rich diversity among brown hues. You can take any woman with brown hair and do several things with her hair color: darken it a rich espresso brown with subtle caramel highlights, lighten it to a warm brown/blonde combination known as "bronde" or create a gradient layering of ombré coloring keeping the roots dark as the ends gradually shade lighter.

You'll notice all the hair in this gallery are glossy and healthy. You can keep your hair glossy with these few tricks:

• Condition hair after every shampoo. If you have an oily scalp, condition the ends only.
• Deep condition hair once a week.
• Finish your shampoo and condition with a quick shot of cold water in the shower. This locks in shine.
• Let hair air dry as much as possible to cut down on harsh heat to hair.
• Get regular trims. Split ends are not cool.
• Spray shine serum on hair after it dries.

In this gallery, we'll highlight the most sought-after brown hair colors, starting with the Duchess of Cambridge.

The Duchess of Cambridge has the most-sought after haircut and color not just in the UK but throughout the world. Kate's hair color is so popular, Britain's Telegraph.co.uk reports that one beauty retailer has seen a dramatic spike in brown hair dye sales since the royal wedding last April. FeelUnique, Europe's biggest online beauty retailer, told the Telegraph that brown hair dye kits are outselling the previously more popular blonde kits at a rate of 2 to one.

Kate's color secret is widely reported to be an organic vegetable-based dye with subtle highlights applied at the Richard Ward Hair and Metrospa in London's Chelsea neighborhood. The UK's Daily Mail also reports that the dye is meant to cover up the occasional gray hairs that Kate has found to her horror (her friends jokingly call them, "stress highlights.")