Some readers continue to not understand an important concept in hair color and don't fret, I
remember to this day how long it took me to have the light bulb turn on and for me to completely understand it as well. I expect to never be finished writing about this subject - E-I-T-H-E-R .... as the more ways you present an idea the higher likely hood you have of people understanding your point.
There are hundreds of hair stylists that read this Blog & I invite anyone to "Guest-Author" a Post on this subject, on secondhand . . . I invite any Hair Stylist to write a Post on a subject of your choice - too! That is a great idea, please consider it.
NOw, back to the subject that is difficult to understand.....many of you continue to get yourselves in some bad situations by not getting it. Please if you think you understand everything about hair color, read this........... be sure you understand this one concept before you do anything further to your hair- color wise. It is and always has been the single most misunderstood fact about Hair Color.
If you have a Level 6 (Brunette) hair color by any company whatsoever on and then want to put a Level 10 (light blonde) on top of it, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. You can use any developer you want to, but the technology just doesn't exist yet in today's world.
In the world we live in today, you can do anything pretty much any more it seems. But Hair Color hasn't really changed a whole lot since being discovered 100 years ago.
People get hung up the terms Demi.......& Semi-permanent..........I find it fascinating. My assistant got her hair colored over the weekend by her niece and went from brown to red which is all the rage here right now.
I was astonished at how great it looked on her, but she said, 'oh my niece only used semi permanent on me' - which I had to break the bad news to her, no - she did not, as you cannot turn brown hair.... red, without using a color WITH developer most likely it was .. 20Volume developer, which makes it permanent. She was upset (which is why I decided to write this Post !).....but......some of the brown MUST come out of the hair in order for the red pigment to go in.
Its a science to me.
To the public they listen to certain words and think that somehow if it is semi permanent or demi permanent, they will be able to shampoo it out and their own virgin hair will return.That simply, is just not the case I'm afraid, and is another of the biggest misconceptions in the hair color industry. It is the sole reason my web site & store has remained busy for nearly 8 years! I continue to explain this to people so they will understand and don't get themselves in trouble over and over
The FDA is too busy trying to keep drugs off our streets than to care about hair color I guess. So any company can put any name on any product, if its permanent color many times they print 'demi' on the box - because they know how the public thinks. Don't listen to them.
I'm afraid to report that many hair stylists don't take the education of hair color seriously, so they begin their color career 'guessing'. Not all of them, but many. They tell their clients the wrong thing and it upsets me because they are misleading you.
If you had used hair color that would only coat your hair with no line of demarcation...........it would HAVE to be a true Semi-permanent hair color, which means (technical and truthfully) hair color that comes straight from the bottle or tube & is NOT MIXED WITH DEVELOPER. Today's world is now calling it "Direct Color" which is a good name for that category of hair color, because it is indicative of how that color is used. . . . . DIRECTLY FROM THE TUBE ! Now the problem of Direct Color is, you cannot "lighten hair. Lightening hair only comes from the combination of hair color and H2O2 or Developer.
When Direct color is used and if you were to apply red on top of brown, you would barely see it. Its as if you took a brown crayon and colored a circle on a piece of paper, now pick up a red crayon, color on top of the brown.....what do you think you will see? Maybe a teeny tiny tint of red, but truthfully it will still look brown, hardly any color will be apparent. Use the same theory with crayons. Its an analogy I came up with a long time ago in trying to explain this theory, so all my Crib Colorists will understand.
As long as developer is mixed with color -- even DEMI & permanent - your own hair color will change because developer alters Virgin hair color....no matter what volume it is. Even 5 Volume and 3 Volume will change virgin hair. So, remember that fact and the only way to get to true Virgin untouched hair is to stop coloring, begin getting your hair trimmed every 6 weeks, until it GROWS OUT! Depending on the length of your hair, your health and your genetics your hair grows an average of 1/2inch per month....it will take quite a while to get it back to VIRGIN.
Its funny the estimates range from 70-90 % of all women color their hair nowadays, hair color is truly considered an accessory or at least here in L.A. it is! I can't tell you the last time I ran into someone with virgin hair color, but its a noble goal for some of you!
So to go lighter, one MUST remove the darker hair color - - first.
Which is why the Shampoo Train and Vanish exist and are one of the top selling items in our store at all times !
Make sense?zs?I hope someone will take me up on writing a Post.....
Thank You,
KC
There are hundreds of hair stylists that read this Blog & I invite anyone to "Guest-Author" a Post on this subject, on secondhand . . . I invite any Hair Stylist to write a Post on a subject of your choice - too! That is a great idea, please consider it.
NOw, back to the subject that is difficult to understand.....many of you continue to get yourselves in some bad situations by not getting it. Please if you think you understand everything about hair color, read this........... be sure you understand this one concept before you do anything further to your hair- color wise. It is and always has been the single most misunderstood fact about Hair Color.
Hair Color does NOT Lift Hair Color
So, if you have one hair color on your hair and want to go LIGHTER, you cannot apply a lighter color on top of a darker one and have it work. We simply do not have that technology, but if I know the cosmetic chemists around the world, they are rap[idly working on this fact as I speak!
In the world we live in today, you can do anything pretty much any more it seems. But Hair Color hasn't really changed a whole lot since being discovered 100 years ago. People get hung up the terms Demi.......& Semi-permanent..........I find it fascinating. My assistant got her hair colored over the weekend by her niece and went from brown to red which is all the rage here right now.
I was astonished at how great it looked on her, but she said, 'oh my niece only used semi permanent on me' - which I had to break the bad news to her, no - she did not, as you cannot turn brown hair.... red, without using a color WITH developer most likely it was .. 20Volume developer, which makes it permanent. She was upset (which is why I decided to write this Post !).....but......some of the brown MUST come out of the hair in order for the red pigment to go in.
Its a science to me.
To the public they listen to certain words and think that somehow if it is semi permanent or demi permanent, they will be able to shampoo it out and their own virgin hair will return.That simply, is just not the case I'm afraid, and is another of the biggest misconceptions in the hair color industry. It is the sole reason my web site & store has remained busy for nearly 8 years! I continue to explain this to people so they will understand and don't get themselves in trouble over and over
THERE ARE VERY FEW LAWS IN OUR COUNTRY
THAT GOVERN THE HAIR INDUSTRY !
The FDA is too busy trying to keep drugs off our streets than to care about hair color I guess. So any company can put any name on any product, if its permanent color many times they print 'demi' on the box - because they know how the public thinks. Don't listen to them.
I'm afraid to report that many hair stylists don't take the education of hair color seriously, so they begin their color career 'guessing'. Not all of them, but many. They tell their clients the wrong thing and it upsets me because they are misleading you.
If you had used hair color that would only coat your hair with no line of demarcation...........it would HAVE to be a true Semi-permanent hair color, which means (technical and truthfully) hair color that comes straight from the bottle or tube & is NOT MIXED WITH DEVELOPER. Today's world is now calling it "Direct Color" which is a good name for that category of hair color, because it is indicative of how that color is used. . . . . DIRECTLY FROM THE TUBE ! Now the problem of Direct Color is, you cannot "lighten hair. Lightening hair only comes from the combination of hair color and H2O2 or Developer.When Direct color is used and if you were to apply red on top of brown, you would barely see it. Its as if you took a brown crayon and colored a circle on a piece of paper, now pick up a red crayon, color on top of the brown.....what do you think you will see? Maybe a teeny tiny tint of red, but truthfully it will still look brown, hardly any color will be apparent. Use the same theory with crayons. Its an analogy I came up with a long time ago in trying to explain this theory, so all my Crib Colorists will understand.
As long as developer is mixed with color -- even DEMI & permanent - your own hair color will change because developer alters Virgin hair color....no matter what volume it is. Even 5 Volume and 3 Volume will change virgin hair. So, remember that fact and the only way to get to true Virgin untouched hair is to stop coloring, begin getting your hair trimmed every 6 weeks, until it GROWS OUT! Depending on the length of your hair, your health and your genetics your hair grows an average of 1/2inch per month....it will take quite a while to get it back to VIRGIN.
Its funny the estimates range from 70-90 % of all women color their hair nowadays, hair color is truly considered an accessory or at least here in L.A. it is! I can't tell you the last time I ran into someone with virgin hair color, but its a noble goal for some of you!
So to go lighter, one MUST remove the darker hair color - - first.
Which is why the Shampoo Train and Vanish exist and are one of the top selling items in our store at all times !
Make sense?zs?I hope someone will take me up on writing a Post.....
Thank You,
KC
Posts
Hi KC, I would really appreciate if you could clarify how lightening works on previously lightened hair with dye, as opposed to darkened hair. It doesn't seem to be addressed anywhere and have been searching for an answer for a while. For example, if the hair was a natural lever 6 and then lightened to a level 8 with 20 vol, could it be lightened some more with another round of level 10 and 20 vol on top of the level 8? Will there be any lightening at all (maybe 1 level?) or zero lightening? Also, would a better alternative, to try and lighten a little bit, be to use bleach with low vol developer for a short time instead?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your time and effort with the blog, it is amazing!
I just found your blog today while I was searching how to fade direct dyes. I am considering going blonde but have a dilemma and I'm not quite sure how to explain my hair issue but here goes:
ReplyDeleteMy natural hair color is a very light mousey brown which I had been dyeing black for years. I decided to get my natural hair color back and chopped all the dye off leaving it as short as Emma Watson's pixie. Well I had it my natural hair color for over a year before I colored then I used a direct vegetable base dye called beyond the zone in a red twice because I thought it would fade out completely. It wasn't so then I used a semi-permanent in a dark brown under the impression it would fade out completely too. It has some but not at the ends and the red is peaking through the middle and my roots are grown out.
basically my hair is three colors:
my natural roots about 2 inches
then like 3 inches of a weird red/orange light brown
and the ends are a dark red brown
Is there anyway to fade this color?
can I bleach over a direct vegetable dye?
thank you thank you!
Whoops my answer below is for the question ABOVE this one - - SORRY....
DeleteAs for you with the 3 colored hair ...........STOP coloring on top of coloring on top of coloring.......you need to justt read about the shampoo Train just Search for it in the Search bar above and read all the posts and follow the Train, because you used that weird vegetable based color I want to blow WHOLE FOODS up sometimes they think if vegetables are in hair dye is something wonderful, when in fact it always ALWAYS end up a complete mess.
Vegetables are for eating and when those dyes are used you pretty much have to wait till the hair grows out I'm sorry to say.....You can also use the Malibu 2000 COLOR PIGMENT REDUCER, which will all help fade the color which is your only option. Just leave it be, go swimming, hot tub,ocean, pools everything natural to fade your natural hair color ...!!!
Sorry for the bad news.
KC
That is a great question and I know that subject is covered many places. The general rule is : NO, you cannot lighten on top of previously lightened hair via color....EXCEPT for by using Bleach lightener with 10 Volume I would suggest.Unless its multiple levels and then most likely 20. BUT, there are some exceptions to the rule....for example if the hair is porous + fine you could have some lightening happen.
ReplyDeleteThere have been quite a few reports of Illumina lightening on top of previously lightened hair ONLY as it uses a different way of developing than other color lines.
But generally the answer is no, and results are just better by using cream lightener.
If you have like this strawberry-blondish hair, and you wanted to temporarily dye your hair brown, what products would you use that will come out?
ReplyDeleteThe one and only product you should use should be a TRUE Semi-permanent product, like we have in our store, I put them in there so I could show people the one and only type of color that is TRULY SEMI-Permanent.
ReplyDeleteCompanies slap the words "SEMI-PERMANENT" on any hair color they feel like, even permanent hair color will have it printed on it some times. Hair color companies that are huge and don't care really how your hair turns out just use words that everyone happens to be looking for and they can get away with it because we have no regulations or guidelines about what they can and cannot say on certain types of hair colors, it is simply chaos in Hair Color -- GONE BAD ! ! WE need to demand from our congressmen that regulations go up in hair color. Its the only way to help all of you . OR you can just follow my Blog I will never lead you astray ! - I promise.
I would use one of the browns we have on the BRUNETTE semi-permanent page which you can find here:
https://killerstrands.myshopify.com/products/semi-permanent-hair-colors?variant=1182516861
I love MOchoa and dark chocolate , I have iuused those on many a photo shoot ( we apply the day before , followed by INTENSIVE.....then THRIVEN ......rinse in the A.M. BINGO ! ! BUUUUYAW ! POOF ! !