Hair Coloring Selection

Here are some very basic tips to help you out:

1) If you can afford it, go to a professional. They have the training and experience to know the ins and outs of coloring. Ask for some referrals around your town from others who color their hair. If you hear one salon or stylist name over and over again, that is a good place to start. Be wary of stylists who are very young, it is best that they have at least 3-5 years behind a chair...experience is key!

2) If you cannot afford professional services and attempt to do it yourself, then pay attention to these few things:

a) If you are really dark haired, do not attempt to become an all-over blonde. This is one area that only a professional can handle with ease much of the time. Botched bleaching leaves the hair spotted, orange, and even in diastrous shape. Be very careful of full head bleaching!

LIFTING YOUR OWN COLOR A FEW SHADES

b) If you want to lighten your hair with tint, determine your skin tone. Warm skin tones (gold or olive skin tones) should stay with the warm hair colors. Those would be the colors denoted most usually by numbers followed by letters such as W (Warm) G (gold) R (red) RB (Red Brown). If your skin is cool (pink undertones or very pale) then the cooler hair tones should be used. These will have the letters D (drab) A (ash) N (neutral).

c) Determining skin tone can be best done by checking eye color and holding the skin next to a blank piece of white paper. People with warmer skin tones will have either brown, green, hazel or blue eyes with gold flecks. The skin will cast a bit of yellow hue to the white paper. (This is very faint, but your skin will look yellow next to the paper anyway.) Folks with cool skin tones will have blue eyes with white flecks, green eyes, and very seldom go much above the color range of hazel eyes. Their skin will cast either no hue to the paper of look pinkish next to it.

c) It is easiest if you work within two shade levels of your natural hair color. Going above that takes considerably more figuring and experience. It also may require higher volumes of peroxide than can be obtained by a non-professional. So if you are a level 6 neutral brown then you should target no more than a level 8 blonde, remembering that when you lift hair it tends to go a bit golder than you might think so you must account for that in selecting your color. If you want a neutral level 8 blonde than you must counteract the yellow pigment left when lifting the hair by choosing a neutral or ash blonde.

d) When you tint hair to lift the color lighter than the natural hair color the RPC (remaining pigment content) of any hair lifted varies depending upon the level of the natural shade of hair you begin with. These would be:
Level 7-- yellow undertones
Level 6--gold undertones
Level 5-- red gold undertones
Level 4--red undertones
Anything under a Level 3 should only be done professionally!

These undertones must be taken into consideration when choosing your color (especially in cool skinned people) to give the finished result a natural look. To counter act the PRC you must choose a color with a base color opposite on the color wheel/spectrum. Thus it would be that the base of your hair colors should be this:
Level 7---violent-blue base
Level 6-- blue base
Level 5--blue-green base
Level 4-- green base
Neutral hair colors are formulated to help with this, so when in doubt choose a (N) formula.

e) Before using a product call the hotline that should be listed on the box. Tell them what you are attempting to do and what color your natural hair and skin are. Let them inform you of specifics and/or tell you if you have the right color. If you do not, then you can exchange it as long as the box has not been opened.

COVERING GRAY

f) If you are coloring to cover gray, remember that the gray hair might take color differntly than your darker color. The more gray, the different the color will look than on the box! Depending upon the amount of gray you must either figure out how to "fill" the hair with missing pigment by adding back the yellow, gold, and red so that even coverage is attained. Thus if you are more than 40% gray you will need to formulate a color choice that has adequate amounts of yellow and gold, perhaps even red, to ensure that the hair which is gray does not take on a blue or green cast in some lights. Again, choose a neutral (N)formula if you are in doubt. Choose something within two shade ranges of your natural hair color for best results.