These pencils are great but I have to say that the consistency is not the same on all of the colors, at least on the five colors that I tried. Thank goodness for Amazon's return policy, like the good old drugstore days but much easier :-) as far as the shades go, I tried three blond Shades and I returned two of them. This information will help you if you are trying to choose which of the three blonde shades! The light blonde is the one that I kept, it isn't so much lighter than the others but it is an ash blond, very natural-looking. That pencil is nice and hard and draws very tiny hairs oh, I like it. Very smear proof and waterproof, as all of the colors that I tried were. I did return the blond color, it was a horrible shade of yellow, almost like tobacco juice in an old guy's beard. Sorry that's the first thing I thought of though. If that matches your hair, you need a purple toner :-) I did also return dark blonde, that shade is red. It's not bad, it's just red. Definitely not for an ash blond. Of these three colors, the light blond and dark blond were hard in consistency, making it easy to draw fine natural looking hairs. But the blonde was a smeary mess. A smeary yellow mess in my opinion. I also tried the ash brown, for a darker tone Oh, and I really like it. It is Ash Brown, very hard consistency draws nice natural looking hairs. I also tried taupe oh, and I kept that one too it was a nice in between the ash brown and the light blond, I consider it a natural ashy tone. In the picture the column to the right with five horizontal lines, is this product, top to bottom, Ash Brown, taupe, light blond, blond, and dark blond. Ignore the two next to them, to the left, unless you are interested, that is Maybelline Tattoo Studio the other long-wearing smear proof waterproof eyebrow pencil that I tried. Also very good but much softer consistency if you want to shape your brows a little bit with it almost like a Pomade pencil. They are lined up with the same name pencil in the L'Oreal, the top one of those two being light blond, the bottom of the two being blond. I like them both, nice natural color. Also long-wearing smear proof and waterproof from what I can tell. I would really like to be a beauty product reviewer if anyone is interested :-) thank you :-)