Hello Person.... Hair can look different under various lighting conditions and system hair and growing hair are obviously different in that the growing hair is getting natural oils etc.... I can see a difference at times on my own when I look in the large mirror with good natural light coming through the window. My own hair is similar to yours.... from a distance it looks almost black, but is actually a very dark brown..... my system hair is a `1b`.....what I do sometimes is I colour `down`my hair using black colour, to darken the brown, and I find the system hair can be then made to look almost black by spraying in some leave-in conditioner and misting with water ... gives a really good colour-match. I`d order 1b if I were you as 1 is jet-black [same as Asian Indian hair] When your 1b system arrives it looks as if it actually IS jet-black, but after a little wear-in , you will begin to see the brown-ish hue under certain lighting, due to `colour-lift`..... don`t worry about it too much though as it shouldn`t be as severe as you fear .... we as wearers [ as I said before] are our own worst critics and look for the slightest imperfection like hawks and then we `amplify`them in our minds ...to 99% of casual observers, they don`t notice a thing! Paul.