Color Wheel/Hair Color Theory : Importance in Formulating Your Own Color

Color Wheel

Remember these from school?

WE have one in the store ........-->
designed just for learning how it relates to hair color and as much as you may not want to have anything to do with it, it is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THEORY you must learn to understand how to color hair correctly. Daily I hear from colorists around the country and their questions indicate to me that they do not quite grasp the way that COLOR THEORY relates to HAIR COLOR (an absolute MUST!).

In order to color your hair with ZERO BLorange, Gold, Brass, Red or Green ( top 5 most annoying "TONES" ) That is the wonder of mastering Color Theory - you will see.
Everyone must have broken out the Crayon box and colored a color at some point in life. You may not remember, but it is a part of education in most countries, the reason ?
Every person see’s colors differently

Primary colors: Red, Yellow, blue
Secondary Colours: Green, Purple,Orange
Tertiary Colors: Red-Purple, Orange-Red, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Purple.
Have you ever seen the color-tinted shampoos and conditioners we sell here at Killerstrands?
BOOST & BURST ? ? 
Every single one of them is based on Color Theory. Many of them conquer the "tonal issues" so many of you have.
For example Hispanic hair (when lightened even a tiny bit) has the strongest tendency to pull Blorange or Orange-y.....so knowing that the annoying color is basically ORANGE .....look above at the COLOR Wheel photo draw a line from the Orange tone.......STRAIGHT ACROSS the chart and your finger ends up on 'what' color?.....
BLUE.
So, therefore, I took a chocolate based brown and I gave it a BLUE base.....so it is a Blue based chocolate BROWN......we call it Cafe Azul which means Blue Coffee..........and it work brilliantly on any brunette hair that has some Bl'orange or gold tones that drive you crazy.

 For years they have had a product that grey hair older ladies use called “Shimmering Lights” it is a purple colored conditioner and shampoo , which takes the “yellow” out of grey, grey hair is actually hair with NO pigment in the strand and with all the lousy water, the yellowing is merely the water tingeing the grey/colorless hair, yellow. Why do you think they call the elder generation. . . . “blue hairs”? 
It's from overdoing“Shimmering Lights”!!

Permanent colors : are not the color in the bowl they end up to be.
Semi Permanent Hair Color ( no developer): This color will look like the color it ends up being on your hair.

ONE OF THE MORE BRILLIANT TRICKS FOR BLONDES Is using both Sandy Beach Beige or Rose Angel Rose in BURST & BOOST colored shampoo & conditioners, to enhance blondes in the newest way.

These are directions for using BURST and BOOST

Directions for use: Shampoo hair at beginning of shower, apply conditioner letting it sit on hair for remainder of shower ( 4-8 minutes)… rinse hair as normal. Check hair in mirror, If still yellow – repeat process > add another teaspoon of purple to mixture. Continue doing this until the colour is right for your hair. 

 If for some strange reason it is too bright… just Shampoo once. Its semi-permanent and comes out very easily ! Its both a matter of the right amount of color and right amount of time you have left it on the hair, as factors that effect outcome. The colored conditioners besides this will work a million times better as you have control over the amount of color so it can be tremendously more effective .

Class Is In Session : Understand How To Rid Hair of Unwanted Tones (DURP)

Unwanted Tones is a difficult subject 

for Most Hair Colorists

I have been writing about this subject for over 10 years. . .because it is single most misunderstood subject. People ask me every single day how they might rid their hair of this tone or that tone. So in a dream (weird I know) the idea below hit me and I am hoping it will help Hair Colorists across the board (both Crib & Professional understand the subject better.

Remember the beginning, you must ALL have or DRAW (with crayons, felt pens or paints are the best) a Color Wheel in your possession, so it is implanted in your brain.

 The idea on this Color Wheel is to get to the middle of the color wheel where your tone will be neutral. EVERYONE (whether you know it or not) wants a NEUTRAL Tone. A Tone that is NOT annoying to the eye. So the center of this color wheel is NEUTRAL. you want to end up with your color in the center.

• The #1 most complained about color is Brass (or Yellow) - see the #1?
• Follow that across the color wheel.... because to draw that brass into the NEUTRAL center - the one and only way to do that is by using ANOTHER color ( whether it be a toner or BOOST & BURST) in the opposing color, which is Violet (and that is why there are 150,000 purple shampoos in the world) !
• The 2nd example is looking at it from the opposite viewpoint. Blue toned Toners or Breaking Bad Blue BOOST & BURST are used to fight the DURP we call : Blorange ....or a Blonde with Orange-y tones.
• Using a Blue based Toner ( which is MATT in Wella ) will fight Blorange-y annoying tones across the board.
• DURP means: DOMINANT - UNDERLYING - REMAINING - PIGMENT. Or in other words - when hair is not lightened enough, these will be the annoying tones you are stuck with.
• That is your whole key to not having DURP problems. Don't lighten your hair. Some people have natural DURP but not very many.....it almost always comes from some sort of coloring adventure.
• So, in order to solve your DURP , just find whatever color it is...................on the above color wheel. Draw an arrow across the wheel................. and then find a Toner or hair color based in that color. You can find hair colors, Toners  & BOOST + BURST,  based in any color you need. Just do a little research !
• 
  
• I hope this Color Wheel helps a little bit for those struggling understanding this.

How In Hell the Color Wheel Relates to Hair Color - Master Becoming A Crib Colorist

The Color Wheel and Hair Color...
Identifying your Natural LEVEL is the first step in understanding PROFESSIONAL HAIR COLOR for the Home Hair Colorist.

The next most valuable tool is the Color Wheel, remember the color wheel from elementary school? That probably sounds odd, let me simplify it.

Its important to have a general understanding of how colors work together, you may already know but let me review and how it relates to Hair Color. Remember I am trying to help you learn to Color your hair correctly at home and that's it! If you can understand the color wheel.... when you have colored your hair blond and it has this weird cast of green to it ??? knowing the color wheel well -will help you understand how it got there and more importantly how to get rid of it. I still to this day will glance at it - I love color, but looking at the wheel can settle many questions with hair.

The LAW OF COLOR is a system for understanding color relationships. When combining colors, you will always get the same result from the same combination. Equal parts of Red and Blue together always make violet. The Color Wheels on this page should help you understand the relationships.


PRIMARY COLORS: are pure fundamental colors that cannot be achieved from a mixture. The primary colors are blue,red and yellow. All colors are created from these colors. Colors predominantly blue are "cool" toned colors...many hair colors are referred to as Cool - Icy ...which usually means have a 'blue base' or 'blue cast' to them. Colors with a predominance of red are "warm" toned colors ... on the flip side many hair colors are also referred to as "warm" in hair color meaning they have red base.

Blue is the darkest of the primary colors and is the only cool primary color. In addition to coolness, blue also brings depth or darkness to any color to which it is added.

Become An Educated Crib Colorist
It is completely necessary to understand COLOR THEORY in order to become a decent Crib Colorist.
First we have Primary hair Colors which are Red, Blue & Yellow. From Red-Blue-& Yellow we can make EVERY SINGLE COLOR on earth! Think about that. So that means that every hair color that exists, is made up of different variations of Red-Blue & Yellow . . .in varying amounts of each color. Therefore when you take away or add opposing colors it fixes or creates your desired hair color.

Take a few minutes and begin hearing some facts about color theory. Let them absorb and we will talk about the subject again.

Red is the medium primary color. Red added to blue-based colors will cause them to appear lighter. Red added to yellow colors will cause them to become darker.

Yellow is the lightest of the primary colors. When you add yellow to other colors, the resulting color is lighter and brighter in appearance.

When all 3 colors are present in equal proportions, the resulting color is BLACK! It helps to think of hair colors in terms of their relative proportions of primary colors. NEUTRAL BROWN, for example, has the primary colors in the following proportions: blue --- B, red --- RR, yellow---YYY.

hang in there . . . don't want to put anyone to sleep..........

Secondary Colors: a color obtained by mixing equal parts of two primary colors...secondary colors are: green, orange and violet .

Blue + Yellow = Green

Red + Yellow = Orange

Red + Blue = Violet

Tertiary Colors is an intermediate color achieved by mixing a secondary color and its neighboring primary color on the color wheel in equal amounts. Tertiary colors include blue-green, blue-violet,red-violet,red-orange,yellow-orange, and yellow-green. Natural looking hair color is made up of a combination of primary and secondary colors.

Last one! and this is the one that saves your butt every time!

my fav...

Complementary Colors are a primary and secondary colors positioned opposite each other on the color wheel. The colors of the BLOGGER website are complementary and many logos and insignias because they "pop". Complementary colors include:

blue........and orange

red..........and green

yellow ....and violet

This where they come in handy...  

Complementary colors NEUTRALIZE each other . When formulating hair color, you will find that it is often your goal to emphasize or distract from skin tones or eye color or to NEUTRALIZE or refine unwanted tones in the hair. Understanding complementary colors will help you choose the appropriate tones to accomplish that goal.

A very common problem, so that you can "picture" this in your mind.... which should help you understand it.

Ever seen a bleached blond who didn't leave the bleach on long enough??? and its this horrid shade of YELLOW , its a very common problem. If you take that head of hair and purchase what is called a "toner" I have always used the analogy of a "NYLON" to my clients . When you shove your arm into a pair of nylons you can still see your arm it just has a "see-thru" cast to it....? correct?? the cast is whatever color "nylon" you chose.

Same with Toners, you can "see" thru them.

So with the very YELLOW bleached blond hair....

WHICH color toner would you track down?

To NEUTRALIZE the YELLOW . . . . . .??? ? ? ?

Look at the color wheel.......................

which color NEUTRALIZES --Yellow ................follow the color wheel ............where??............opposite side.............

Violet.

Violet based Toner.

A COOL BASED VIOLET toner,will knock that yellow out of the ball park! So NO MORE BRASS! ! ! 

Fun and Games

The missing primary color in this game is what you would use to neutralize the unwanted tone.

Find the color to neutralize the following:

Orange ?

Green ?

Violet ?

Really spend time trying to learn Color Theory  . . .one day, I promise it will just click, as I have watched all my assistants learn over the years.