Coloring your hair can be an excellent way of changing your style and feeling like a new version of yourself. There are so many different ways you can color your hair, from highlighting to dyeing your entire hair a new color, and everything in between!
Anyone can do this as well, no matter what color your hair is naturally. However, you shouldn’t even rush into something like this without knowing what lies ahead. Coloring your hair is actually quite a big thing to do and it will have consequences that you must be aware of. Not only that, but you need to understand some of the basic principles of dyeing your hair and how to go about it.
Keeping all of this in mind, here’s everything you need to know about coloring your hair:
Certain colors won’t suit you
Sorry to tell you this, but it’s better to get it out of the way than beat around the bush. You’ve seen some of the latest celebrity hair trends and you’ve wanted to copy them. Lavender or purple hair was very popular a year or so ago, as was the whole silver/platinum look. It felt as though so many people were dyeing their hair these colors, and you want to jump on the trend.
However, certain colors just won’t suit you, no matter how hard you try. This is down to your natural skin tone and the natural color of your hair. In some cases, the colors just won’t match together and it won’t suit you. A good way to see if a color will suit you is by downloading apps that let you change the color of your hair. While not 100% accurate, they do help you see if your skin tone matches a new color before you spend money dyeing it.
Coloring your hair can take more than one attempt
Don’t assume that you can buy some box dye, head to your bathroom, and have a completely different hair color in an hour or two. By all means, this can happen, but coloring your hair will often take more than one attempt to get right.
Sometimes, this is simply because your natural color needs time to transition to the new color. Going from brown hair to blonde hair is a brilliant example of this. As you can see from this brown and brunette hair color chart, there are different shades of brown out there. If you are more towards the darker shades of brown, it will take at least two attempts before your hair starts going blonde. The lighter the brown, the fewer attempts you will need. The same goes for when you transition between two other opposite colors; you need to gradually get your hair to its final destination with repeat dyes.
In some cases, you may only need one attempt to color your hair. For instance, going from dark brown to a lighter shade of brown will usually only need one session. But, don’t be surprised if the results don’t show after one effort – don’t let it dishearten you, you can always re-dye it and see better results.
Salons are more reliable but more expensive
There are two options when coloring your hair:
- Do it yourself
- Go to a salon
Salons are generally more reliable as you have a colorist that will take care of everything for you. Essentially, they are trained to color hair and will do it every single day. They’ve seen it all and have helped people achieve their dream color. So, they know all the tricks and tips to ensure that your hair coloring process goes as well as possible. Your chances of failing and having a disaster are slim when you go to a salon. In fact, most people that suffer from DIY coloring disasters will see a colorist to fix their hair!
The only downside is that salon treatments are expensive. Obviously, it varies from provider to provider, but you might end up paying a few hundred dollars to get your hair done. By comparison, DIY home coloring kits are significantly cheaper. If you want to save money, doing it at home is the obvious way forward. Still, you have the tradeoff between saving money and guaranteeing that you see excellent results. You could color your hair perfectly at home, but there’s always more of a risk involved!
Choose your DIY coloring kits carefully
For those of you that do want to color your hair at home, you need to choose your products wisely. There are a couple of key things you should look for when buying hair coloring kits. For one, be sure it contains as few harmful ingredients as possible. Keep an eye on the ingredients for things like peroxide, alcohol, and ammonia. These ingredients are found in many cheap products but they will harm your hair and make it very brittle with each dye.
Secondly, be sure to avoid permanent hair coloring kits if possible. These kits will be a lot stronger than semi-permanent ones, meaning the risk of making a mistake is higher. With a semi-permanent option, it is far easier to correct an error yourself or re-dye your hair in a slightly different shade to make it darker or lighter.
Finally, always check reviews before you buy anything. Ideally, you want reviews with before and after pictures so you know if a product works or not. There are plenty of video reviews on YouTube, and you will also be able to find a multitude of written reviews online. Never buy a product that you have found while wandering around in a store, always Google it first to see what others think of it. This helps you pick the best products to get the best results when dyeing your own hair.
You will need to maintain your new hair
Obviously, hair maintenance is a big thing that you do all the time. Normally, this involves washing and conditioning it, maybe applying masks, and so on. You do this to keep your hair clean and healthy, but coloring your hair adds another layer of maintenance to proceedings.
Here, you need to maintain your new hair to retain its color for as long as possible. Fading will happen, but you can delay this with the right approach. Here are a few tips on how to maintain the color in your hair:
- Use a shampoo that’s designed to protect colors, rather than just a standard shampoo.
- Wash your hair less frequently as the more you wash it the quicker the color will fade. Try to stick to a routine of washing it up to three times a week, but the less the better.
- Try to avoid going to swimming pools as the chlorine in the water can cause your hair to go green. This isn’t a myth, it’s something that happens because of how the chlorine reacts with other compounds in the water. If you are going swimming, either wear a swimming cap or use a special hair mask beforehand that should prevent the issue.
- Protect your hair from the sun as the UV rays are known to make colors fade over time.
These maintenance tips should help you retain your new color for as long as possible before it starts fading. When it does begin to fade, you can always top it up. This means either doing it yourself or going to the salon yet again.
Oh, one more note for people with blonde hair! If you have dyed your hair blonde, make sure you use a purple shampoo. Plenty exist, and they specifically help blonde hair stay blonde. Use it once a week for the best results.
Use a clarifying or purifying shampoo prior to dyeing
Washing your hair with a shampoo that purifies it and removes build-ups from your hair is beneficial when coloring. These shampoos are designed to refresh your hair and leave your scalp and follicles as clean as possible. When hair dye is then applied to this clean hair, it will cling to it a lot better. Thus, the dye will stay for longer than usual. It’s a very simple hack, but one that makes a huge difference.
Don’t color your hair too much, too often
Coloring your hair is, unsurprisingly, not good for it. Think about all the different chemicals in hair dye – it’s not good to expose your hair to them too often. This is why colorists will space out any appointments to give your hair time to recover and adapt. If you color your hair too much, too frequently, you will damage it. The follicles will get weaker, the texture of your hair will be straw like; it’s just not good for you.
Hopefully, this gives you all the information you need before coloring your hair. There’s enough advice here to understand how to color your hair, the best way to do so, how to maintain it, and what to be wary of. Now, you can figure out if dyeing your hair is the right move to make.