Colouring

Everyone’s doing it! Are you? Yes, colouring your hair is rampant these days – the constantly changing heads of hair on the catwalks, fashion mags and all those celebs – it seems their hair colour changes almost every other day!
But is it really as easy as they make it look….?
The short answer is no. Sorry…. however if you have patience and a great colourist you can achieve success.
It’s more than likely that you started experimenting with colours when you were at school. From there, you probably tried a few different colours, with varying degrees of success. So, lets start with a few key points about the colour process and how it will affect your hair.
Firstly, everyone has a different undertone or reflects in their hair.
So for example if you have black, dark brown, or medium brown hair, you will have a undertone of red. If you have light brown, dark blonde, medium blonde, you will have a undertone of orange. If you have light blonde to pale blonde, you will have a undertone of yellow.
This means if you colour your hair lighter or lift your hair colour in anyway your natural undertone is always going to show through.
So, the more you strip back a colour (lighten) the more of the undertone or reflection you will see. The reality is, that the process to change your hair colour is a long and slow one – there is no cheap option to achieve the colour you want, as well as keeping your hair healthy at the same time.
Your colourist is brilliant, but even they are limited to what they can do for you.
Essentially colouring is a two step process, and repeat, and repeat…
To start the process your colourist will bleach or lift your hair to the palest colour you can reasonably achieve – be patient, the first few times even it may not be as light as you wanted! It’s also worth remembering that when you lift or strip your hair you are not only stripping colour pigment out of your hair but also moisture so you can expect damage of some kind.

Then your colourist will tone your hair with a colour toner: green to cancel red, blue to cancel orange, and violet to cancel yellow. Sometimes this makes the hair muddy looking, or a little tinged to a blue, green, or even a violet colour.
Also a toner will only lasts 4-6 weeks, after that the undertone or reflect is back to its natural undertones. So you need to keep on top of your toner or use a specific toning shampoo. Your colourist should be able to give you the best treatment for your hair. This may also mean going back to the colourist every few weeks.
You will need to balance your hair with a pH conditioner, so it keeps your hair’s condition at its best, this will also help your colour and your toner will last longer and look shinier and healthier.
So, while it may look like celebrities change their hair overnight, that’s simply not the case. Colouring takes time and lots and lots of patience…but the results are well worth it. Happy – patient – colouring !
For expert hair colouring Noosa Hairdressers are the professionals you can trust on the Sunshine Coast.