The Stunning Hair Transformation Of Pentatonix Star Kirstin Maldonado

The five singers in the a cappella group Pentatonix look unrecognizable in throwback pics, but no member of the quintet has undergone more changes than Kirstin Maldonado. This is because she's constantly updating her hairstyles, which has made her look archive quite a visual feast.

Pentatonix set the stage for superstardom in 2011 when Maldonado and two of her former schoolmates, Mitch Grassi and Scott Hoying, teamed up with Avi Kaplan and Kevin Olusola on the reality series "The Sing-Off." Maldonado had dyed her hair blond ahead of the competition. "It's crazy that many people have only seen me blonde," she wrote on X in December 2011, one month after Pentatonix won the competition. "Dark brown is my natural color, and I feel like having darker hair is so weird now." The Texas native wouldn't feel this way forever, nor would she be content to stick with natural hair colors and conventional hairstyles.

Musically, the mezzo-soprano's goal is to harmonize with her bandmates flawlessly, but she does anything but blend in by rocking colorful wigs and Bad Girl RiRi bouffants during their performances. Unfortunately, her daring hair makeovers haven't always been hits with those near and dear to her. "I shaved a quarter of my hair one time, and my poor nana was crying when I FaceTimed her, but I was like, "It's just hair! It's fun,"" she told WWD in 2017. However, there have also been times during her hair journey when the changes have felt deeply meaningful.

Pentatonix released their first EP, "PTX Volume 1," in June 2012, and the band secured their place as a seasonal juggernaut later that year by dropping what would be the first of many Christmas albums. Meanwhile, Kirstin Maldonado spent the year gifting her fans with a perpetual parade of fresh hairstyles, including the side shave with two sharp racing stripes that had her nana in tears (but which fit perfectly with the steampunk vibe of Pentatonix's "Radioactive" music video). The following February, she shared a mini retrospective of her 2012 looks on Instagram. These included a range of colors from honey blond to inky black. She even experimented with contrasts by adding some bleach-blond underlights after going back to brunette.

Maldonado usually wore her hair with a deep center part and side-swept bangs, but would mix things up by styling its substantial length in a variety of different ways, including corkscrew curls, blown out straight, and tousled, voluminous waves. "I changed my hair color so much in 2012, I'm surprised I still have hair. Wow," she wrote on X. 

Unfortunately, she wasn't always happy with the results of her pigment experimentations. Maldonado chronicled her struggle to get her hair to a shade she liked, writing in one post, "Spent 7+ hours at the hair salon 2 dif times trying to fix my hair instead of hanging out w/ mom for mom's day — and the hair still looks bad." Just add her to the list of celebrities who have undergone hair transformations they regret. 

Undeterred by her bad experience with hair dye, by the fall of 2014, Kirstin Maldonado had gone back to blond. In an Instagram photo with her boyfriend at the time, Jeremy Michael Lewis, Maldonado rocked a retro hairdo that was backcombed on the top with the bottom rolled into bouncy barrel curls. It was like something you'd see in Dolly Parton's throwback photos, but her golden coils weren't quite as copious or colossal as those that once comprised the queen of country music's crowning glory. It's unclear whether Maldonado was trying to channel the "Coat of Many Colors" singer, but she did tell The Oklahoman that she's a big Parton fan.

When Pentatonix appeared in the movie "Pitch Perfect 2," which premiered in 2015, Maldonado's hair was waist-length and styled in springy curls. But ahead of the Grammy Awards that February, she teased that a big change was coming. "Oh my gosh y'all my hair has NEVER been this short," she wrote on X. Fans got to see the results of her drastic chop when she hit the red carpet with a stylish lob and fresh dye job that lightened her hair a few shades and eliminated the yellow tones, making it a more sophisticated, high-end hue. Maldonado's new hair wasn't the only winning moment that night; Pentatonix took home their first Grammy for their "Daft Punk" medley. The song's trippy music video features an unrecognizable Maldonado in an electric blue wig with heavy blunt bangs.

Pentatonix's career was on the upswing in 2017, with the group taking home their third Grammy for their "Jolene" collab with Dolly Parton. One of the most important chapters in Kirstin Maldonado's transformation into an accomplished, confident artist soon followed: the launch of her solo career. While the move came as Pentatonix was still reeling from Avi Kaplan's exit from the group, Maldonado wasn't following his lead; her new music was just a side project.

After dropping the single "Break a Little," she spoke to AOL about the new sound fans would hear from her on "L O V E," her first EP as a solo act. "The overall vibe and concept are a little edgier and darker than Pentatonix would be," she said.

Maldonado also debuted a new look that definitely matched her moodier musical direction. At the Grammy Awards in February 2017, her hair had been ombré with a dark base and bleach-blond ends. But two weeks later, she showed up to Kodak's Oscar Gala with the length dyed a silvery blue hue. She described it as her "blue steel hair" on Instagram and credited colorist Logan Jackson for making her glossy locks look like liquid moonlight. The change felt like the start of an exciting new era for Maldonado, who opened up to Hollywood Life about why she had decided that it was time for her to strike out on her own. "As I've grown up and come into myself as a person, I got more confident and wanted to be able to express that," she said. "Now, having experience and confidence, this project has been amazing, and I feel more creative."

Jeremy Michael Lewis proposed to Kirstin Maldonado in 2016, but in October 2017, Radar reported that the pair were having problems and were no longer going to tie the knot on their planned wedding date. They eventually decided to part ways for good, and Maldonado got in on the celebrity trend of undergoing a post-breakup hair transformation by getting back to her roots. In a May 2018 Instagram post, she showed off her sleek, dark layers and assured fans that she was perfectly content. "This is the most me I've looked and felt in a long time, and I'm happy to be entering this next chapter just as I am," she wrote. "This May has been the best month." The following month, she shared an update on the state of her velvety mane. "My hair is so healthy I️ wanna scream," she wrote.

While her breakup was a bummer, Maldonado had something else to celebrate in 2018: She joined the cast of "Kinky Boots" and made her Broadway debut. Her character, Lauren, was blond, but Maldonado didn't have to put her hair's health at risk for the sake of the role. That March, the singer shared a photo of herself in character on Instagram and wrote in the caption, "Hi, I live in this wig so much that I forget I have black hair (and so does everyone else)."

Kirstin Maldonado began dating her now-husband, Pentatonix videographer Ben Hausdorff, sometime in 2018, and she's rocking red hair in some of her earliest photos with him. The pitch-perfect singer and her partner look picture-perfect in the snapshot above, which was taken in September 2019. As you can see, Maldonado has ditched the millennial side part and traded her side-swept bangs for a pair of sparkly barrettes that show off more of her face rather than concealing it. It's also amazing how much lighter her formerly floofy hair looks when it's been straightened.

Maldonado wore her rust-colored tresses in pigtails when she and Hausdorff took a trip to Rio de Janeiro in October 2019, and she replicated the style two months later when she appeared on "Sesame Street." She kept the color through the New Year, rocking it when she attended the Golden Globes with Hausdorff in January 2020. Perhaps the lack of change was actually a sign of how happy the singer was. After all, she did tell WWD, "I always feel good after I change my hair," but during her honeymoon phase with Hausdorff, months went by without Maldonado feeling the need to visit her colorist for a mood boost. However, she eventually decided that she didn't want to keep her fiery, high-maintenance hair color forever. "Last pic w the reddddd," she captioned an August 2020 selfie.

Kirstin Maldonado dusted off her old blond curly style for the 2020 Billboard Music Awards and gave it a dramatic update. She wore her cascading golden waves half up in a high pony, and her ginormous jet black falsies stood in stark contrast to her very Beyoncé crème brûlée hair. When she showed off her look on Instagram, some of her followers couldn't believe that they were looking at Maldonado.

The performer has a complicated relationship with the color blond. Amid the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Maldonado shared her musings on some heavy topics, including racial profiling and injustice. She has Mexican, Spanish, and Italian ancestry, and she questioned her younger self's reasons for dyeing her hair blond. "Was it genuine or was I doing it to fit in, did I think it made me prettier, or more likable?" she wrote on her blog. "Did I think or know that it would get me roles, because many ingenues or leading ladies at the time didn't look like me?"

Clearly, Maldonado eventually became more comfortable with her natural appearance, as evidenced by how she often goes back to black hair when she gets bored with her newest color du jour. She's also not here for the fans who express a preference for her keeping her hair a lighter hue. In a 2018 X post, she shared a GIF of herself giving the camera a sassy smirk and wrote, "When people say I look too different now, they miss "the old me" and use a picture of me when I was insecure, blond, and looked completely opposite of what natural me (dark hair and features) would look like."

When Kirstin Maldonado had a brief flirtation with pink hair, her colorist smartly started with a bright shade. She was rocking the vibrant color when she celebrated her 29th birthday in May 2021, complete with a cake with icing that matched her mane. However, just days before her party, Maldonado wasn't certain that she was going to stick with the hue that pop icon Gwen Stefani helped popularize. "Should I go blonde or stay pink — is blond so been-there-done-that LOL is it time to dye it ... dark again," she wrote on X.

Maldonado hadn't given in to the temptation to make another swap when Pentatonix celebrated their 10th anniversary by filming a cover of the Lady Gaga and Beyoncé hit "Telephone," which was fitting since Gaga is also a pink hair fan. And although it didn't quite fit with the patriotic aesthetic of her red and blue princess gown, Maldonado kept the hair color when Pentatonix filmed a performance for the "A Capitol Fourth" Independence Day concert special in June 2021. Her immaculate Barbie waves were the work of hairstylist Torsten Witte, whose other famous clients include "Miss Independent" singer Kelly Clarkson and "Pluribus" star Rhea Seehorn. Just months later, Maldonado would declare her independence from color with an icy blond shade devoid of pigment — before making yet another change.

During a 2015 Facebook Q&A, a fan asked Kirstin Maldonado whether she likes her hair brunette or blond best, and she explained why she often chooses between the two hues on the opposite ends of the shade spectrum. "I like extremes. So either really dark or really light. I don't know which is my favorite," she wrote. But perhaps her return to the dark side in 2022 had little to do with indecision.

That March, Maldonado announced that she and Ben Hausdorff were expecting their first child. The couple decided to enjoy a babymoon in Cancun before welcoming their little one, and Maldonado definitely had the pre-pregnancy glow. Her beachy brunette waves also looked healthy, and while it's generally considered safe to dye your hair while pregnant, maybe Maldonado decided to stick with her natural color until giving birth because she wanted something low-maintenance that would free up more time to invest in preparing for motherhood.

She welcomed her daughter, Elliana Violet, in June 2022. When Maldonado introduced the tot to the wonderful world of wigs the following March, it wasn't with one inspired by her middle name; instead, the pair rocked pink mommy-and-me wigs.

After she walked down the aisle with Ben Hausdorff in April 2024, Kirstin Maldonado told People that they decided to get married in Texas so that her elderly Nana could make it to the event. This time, Nana probably wasn't crying over Maldonado's hair (if there were any tears, they were most likely of the happy variety). The singer didn't sport any side-shaving or any of her other past hairstyles that had a punk rock edge, opting instead for a dreamy, timeless look.

Maldonado kept her hair dark and wore it in a long, silky blowout with the slightest of waves. It had a healthy sheen, and a center part made it both on-trend and classic. The romantic 'do perfectly complemented her mantilla veil and Kim Kassas gown, which featured a corseted bodice and subtle lace details. Hairstylist Sami Knight, whose client list includes Adele and Gwen Stefani, was responsible for executing Maldonado's romantic vision. He seemed pleased with his work, describing her as an "angel bride" on Instagram. 

While Maldonado's overall bridal look was arguably the most breathtaking sight at her wedding, the atmosphere wasn't so bad, either. Describing her wedding dance, she told The Knot, "I thought, "Wow, here we are. It's so beautiful, and we're surrounded by all our favorite people in this beautiful space that we had been dreaming up.""

The holidays are always big for Pentatonix, as their a cappella style is so well-suited for classic Christmas tunes. By the time the band's busy and booked season rolled around in 2025, Kirstin Maldonado had become a mom for the second time; her son, Theo Fortunato, was born in March 2025. It had also become evident that Theo's older sister had adopted their mom's fondness for getting all glammed up. Maldonado told People in 2024 that it's one of Elliana's favorite aspects of the holiday tour life: "She goes into hair and makeup, and is like, "My turn.""

A year later, Elliana was probably requesting some of the glamorous hairstyles her mom was rocking on stage for Pentatonix's 2025 Christmas in the City Tour. The side part returned so that Maldonado could serve some vintage glam, complete with glistening curls galore. On Instagram, she credited Jay Alarcon for her hair and makeup and showed off how well his artistry worked with her stunning, silver screen-ready costumes. "Absolutely OBSESSED with my life of a showgirl golden age of Hollywood era looks this tour!!!! Like DREAM STATUS, Moulin Rouge fantasy!!!!" she wrote. "Thank you to the entire glam team for pulling these iconic looks off."