Tomodachi Life Hair Tutorial: Full Step-by-Step Guide

Download Article

Make custom hairstyles for your Miis with this easy hair tutorial

Written by Hannah Dillon

Last Updated: August 26, 2026 Fact Checked

Download Article

Getting Started

|

Drawing Hair from Basic Shapes

|

Drawing the Outline First

|

More Tomodachi Life Mii Tutorials

|

Video

In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, some people have gotten incredibly creative with the Miis they design. If you want to create some super-custom Miis but you're not sure how, you've found the right article! In this article, we'll go over how to draw custom hair for your Miis from start to finish, including two different hair drawing methods. Keep reading to learn how!

Making Custom Hair in Tomodachi Life: LTD

In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, you can create custom hair using the face paint tool. Start by designing your Mii, then draw your Mii's hair. You can start by drawing some basic shapes and adding details later, or you can draw the details first and fill in the hair with the paint bucket tool.

Section 1 of 4:

Getting Started

Download Article

1
Choose your Mii's hairstyle. When you create custom hair in Tomodachi Life, you can only create the front part of the hair (such as bangs). The back of the hair must be one of the available options in the character creator.
- If you want to create custom hair, start by choosing a hairstyle where you can pick and choose the bangs and back. For the bangs, pick an option in the first row. The very first option (which has no bangs) is perfect for creating custom hair.
- You can choose whatever you want for the back of your Mii's hair.
2
Design the rest of your Mii. While you can do your custom hair first, it's usually easier to draw it if you add your Mii's eyes, nose, and mouth first.
- If you plan on drawing any of these facial features with face paint, you can skip ahead!
Advertisement
Scroll to the last option in the left-hand sidebar while in the character creator, then click Add face paint.
If you're in easy mode, you won't have as many options for drawing your Mii's hair with face paint. You'll know you're in easy mode if you see a Pro Mode button at the top of the screen. If you see this button, tap it to switch to pro mode.
5
Get a stylus (optional). While you can definitely draw awesome hair in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream with your finger, you'll have an easier time if you have a stylus.
- Any stylus that works with a capacitive screen will work, including the soft, rubbery styluses (sometimes found on the ends of pens). These styluses are cheap, and you might already have one. However, they offer less control than other stylus styles.
- Some users prefer styluses with a disc at the tip. These styluses can offer more control, though the disc may drag on your screen, depending on your screen protector.
- The third type of stylus you can use is an active stylus that works with capacitive screens. These styluses look similar to an Apple Pencil, but they work with capacitive screens rather than iPad screens. They require charging and have an on/off button, but they are the most precise option.
6
Learn the tools. There are a lot of tools available in face paint mode, and it's best to understand what each tool does before you dive into drawing. From left to right, at the top of the screen:
- Move tool: Tapping this tool, then dragging on the drawing area, will move all of the face paint you've drawn. Great for moving your face paint if it's in the wrong spot, and you want to move everything you've drawn.
- Select tool: Use this tool to select parts of your drawing. You can then move it, clone it, flip it, and more.
- Text tool: Use this tool to add text to your drawing. You can choose from three fonts, as well as two font styles.
- Stamp tool: When you select this tool, you can pick a stamp that you can then add to your drawing. There are a number of options, including shapes, images of treasures from the game, images of items you've created, and pictures of your Miis.
- Shape tool: Use this tool to draw a circle/oval, square/rectangle, triangle, hexagon, star, or heart shape. The shape can be filled or just be an outline (with three outline thicknesses available).
- Paint bucket tool: Use this tool to fill large areas with a color. If you tap the paint bucket tool again, you can choose a pattern to fill an area with.
- Brush tool: This is the tool you'll be using the most, so we'll go over the options available for this tool in depth:
  - Brush type: You can choose a hard-edged brush, an airbrush, or a pixel brush.
  - Brush size: There are 12 brush sizes available for each brush, six that are round and six that are square (with the exception of the pixel brush, which has 8 sizes).
  - Line options: Choose Straight if you want to draw a straight line. Choose Smooth if you want to draw a smooth line, though it will smooth out any curves you draw to be less curvy.
  - Paint options: Choose Bright to overlay a brighter color when drawing. Choose Dark to overlay a darker color when drawing. Choose Layered to overlay a slightly translucent version of the color you're using.
    - These are similar to blending modes in painting programs like Photoshop.
  - Handy options: Choose Outline to only draw around the perimeter of what you've already drawn. Choose Lock transparency to only draw within the confines of what you've already drawn.
- Eraser tool: If you tap this option twice, you'll be able to change your eraser brush, size, and style, similar to the brush tool options.
- Dropper tool: Use this tool to pick up a color you've already drawn with in your palette.
- Effects tool: Use this tool to add effects to your drawing, including blur, hue shift, and saturation. Note that these effects will apply to the entire drawing.
- Settings: You can adjust your face paint settings in this menu.
- Palette: Along the right side of your screen is your palette. Tap on a color to change it. You can either choose from a bunch of preset colors or use the color picker to choose a custom color.
  - You can easily pick your Mii's skin or hair color in the bottom-left corner of the palette window.
7
Choose whether you want the face paint on top or below your Mii's features. If you tap the smiley face icon on the left side of the screen, you'll be able to choose Paint behind or Paint on top. This refers to whether the face paint will be above or below your Mii's facial features. Here are some things to consider:
- If you're drawing custom hair, choose Paint on top so the bangs will cover your Mii's eyes and eyebrows. However, leaving the eyes/eyebrows on top of the hair (by selecting Paint behind) can give your Mii a retro anime look!
- If you're drawing on your Mii's eyes or mouth, choose Paint behind. If you choose Paint on top, the face paint will look strange when your Mii emotes or talks.
In the smiley face menu, you'll also see an option that says Illuminate. If you toggle this on, your Mii's face paint will glow. You can change the intensity of this glow by dragging the slider (the left is less glowy, the right is more glowy).
9
Choose how you want to draw your Mii's hair. There are two main ways to do this: drawing hair from basic shapes or drawing the outline first. Skip ahead to the method that you want to try.
- You can also use any face paint tool to create your Mii's hair. Some people use stamps, shapes, or even the text tool to make hair. Try out different methods and let your creativity run wild!

Section 2 of 4:

Drawing Hair from Basic Shapes

Download Article

This will help you see what you're drawing. We'll change your Mii's hair color later.
For example, if your Mii has bangs and two long bits of hair on each side of their head, draw two long, curved triangles on each side of your Mii's head, then draw a half circle across their forehead.
3
Add more details. If you want your Mii's hair to look more like hair, draw little wisps coming off the shapes you just drew. You can draw small triangles to give the hair a layered look, or you can draw thin, wispy lines to look like flyaways.
- You can also erase parts of what you already drew! For example, if you drew bangs, you could erase some skinny triangles from the bottom so it doesn't look like one block and to give it a more hair-like appearance.
Once you're happy with the outline, fill in your Mii's hair with the same bright color you used to draw the outlines. Make sure to zoom in and fill in every pixel!
To do this, select the brush tool and toggle on "Lock transparency." This means you won't be able to draw outside of the lines of the hair you already drew.
6
Change the hair to your Mii's hair color. Select a color in your color palette, then choose your Mii's hair color on the left. You can then use a large brush to color over your drawing and change it to your Mii's hair color.
- Your Mii's hair color in the face paint tool is actually a shade or two lighter than your Mii's actual hair. If this bothers you, select your Mii's hair color in the color picker, then make it just slightly darker. It may take some trial and error to get it right.
Using another color from your palette, make a shadow color by choosing your Mii's hair color, then darkening it and adding a little gray. You can try to match this to the shadows on your Mii's hair that you can already see. You should also create a highlight color out of another color in your palette by selecting your Mii's hair color and making it a bit lighter and brighter.
In the brush menu, toggle on "Outline." You should also choose a relatively small brush here. The second-smallest size works well for adding outlines.
9
Color in the outlines of your Mii's hair with the shadow color you made. You can choose to outline the entire thing, or you can only add outlines where the shadows would be. If it looks a bit messy, we'll clean it up in the next step.
- If you made your Mii's hair very dark, the outline might not be noticeable, and darker colors will even show some weird artifacting around the lines you draw. If this is the case, you may want to skip adding shadows and outlines altogether.
10
Turn off outline-only mode and clean up your outlines. Tap the brush menu and toggle off "Outline." You should also switch to the smallest brush size. When it comes to cleaning up your outlines, here are some things to consider:
- If you don't want an outline around the entire outside of your Mii's bangs, select your Mii's default hair color in the palette and "erase" parts of the outline you drew.
- Use a small brush with the shadow color in your palette to define different parts of your Mii's hair (like separating the bangs from the locks hanging on either side of their face).
- Use a small brush to sharpen out the rounded edges.
11
Add thicker shadows. To add more dimension to your Mii's hair, draw in some thicker shadows where hair pieces overlap.
- If you're not sure where these shadows might be, imagine the sun is shining in your Mii's face. Then, imagine how parts of your Mii's hair would cast shadows on the parts "behind" them. Imagining where shadows would fall in relation to a light source is a difficult part of art, but you can always look up reference images online for inspiration!
12
Add highlights. There are a few ways you can do this:
- For a more anime look, use the circle shape tool to draw ovals around the top of your Mii's hair.
- You can also use a brush to draw a jagged line across the front of your Mii's bangs.
- If you want a look that matches Tomodachi Life a bit better, observe how the vanilla hair's highlights look.
- You can also leave highlights off entirely if you want!
Check out your Mii in the game. If you don't like how something looks, you can always go back into the face paint mode and tweak it!^{[1]
X
Research source}

Section 3 of 4:

Drawing the Outline First

Download Article

You can start with the outline color you want your Mii's hair to have, or choose a bright color to make it easier to see. For this method, the second-smallest brush is the best to start with, but use whatever works best for you.
Don't worry about filling anything in yet. Just draw the outline, and be as detailed as you want.
To do this, select the brush tool and toggle on "Lock transparency." This means you won't be able to draw outside of the lines of the hair you already drew.
If you drew in a bright color, pick the color you want your Mii's hair outlines to be, then use a big brush to color everything in.
5
Add details. If you want to adjust the color of your outlines only in certain parts, use a small brush and pick a color that matches your Mii's hair outline. You may need to create some custom colors for this!
- This section is optional, but some people prefer to make the outlines lighter in areas where the hair overlaps.
6
Fill in the outlines with your Mii's hair color. Select a color in your color palette, then choose your Mii's hair color on the left. You can then use the paint bucket tool to fill in your Mii's hair outlines. Make sure to zoom in and get every pixel!
- Your Mii's hair color in the face paint tool is actually a shade or two lighter than your Mii's actual hair. If this bothers you, select your Mii's hair color in the color picker, then make it just slightly darker. It may take some trial and error to get it right.
Using another color from your palette, make a shadow color by choosing your Mii's hair color, then darkening it and adding a little gray. You can try to match this to the shadows on your Mii's hair that you can already see. You should also create a highlight color out of another color in your palette by selecting your Mii's hair color and making it a bit lighter and brighter.
8
Draw in shadows. Using the smallest brush in your shadow color, draw where you want the shadows on your Mii's hair, then use the paint bucket tool with that color to fill them in.
- If you're not sure where these shadows might be, imagine the sun is shining in your Mii's face. Then, imagine how parts of your Mii's hair would cast shadows on the parts "behind" them. Learning where shadows would fall based on a light source is a difficult concept in art, but you can always look up reference images online to learn more!
9
Add highlights. There are a few ways you can do this:
- For a more anime look, use the circle shape tool to draw ovals around the top of your Mii's hair.
- You can also use a brush to draw a jagged line across the front of your Mii's bangs.
- If you want a look that matches Tomodachi Life a bit better, observe how the vanilla hair's highlights look.
- You can also skip adding highlights, if you prefer!
Check out your Mii in the game. If you don't like how something looks, you can always edit your Mii's face paint again to make it look perfect.^{[2]
X
Research source}