With summer coming on, many of us might want to try a fresh new look or brighten up our hair color, and who wants to pay salon prices when you can just color your own hair at home?
Well, you might want to pay those salon prices if you have had a bad experience coloring your own hair or are afraid of ending up with an obnoxious or patchy color.
Fear the home hair color no more! You can easily color your own hair at home if you keep in mind a few simple things:
Stay Within Two Shades of Your Natural Color
If you want your new color to look real and completely believable, follow this rule and stick to two shades lighter or darker.
While we’re on the subject…
Always Pick the Lighter Shade
If you are torn between a darker and a lighter shade, pick the lighter shade first. Should it turn out wrong you can always go darker. It is much harder to lighten hair than to darken it.
Choosing the Right Shade
Don’t go by the pretty model’s hair on the front of the box. Always look at the side of the box and match your natural hair color up as close as you can to one of those displays to see what shade your new color will most likely be.
Warm or Ashy?
Warm shades work well for both blondes and brunettes if you have a warm complexion, brown or green eyes, or any golden undertones in either your skin or hair. Warm also works well if you have a sort of flat color that you want to give life.
Ash tones help neutralize red, which is particularly helpful if you have a lot of red tones that you want to tone down.
What About Highlights?
This is tricky. You don’t want to dye at home if you have highlights already, because you will end up with stripes in your hair ‘” and no one wants to be a zebra.
Here are the rules: lots of platinum or blonde highlights need to be uniformed by a salon professional first, but darker blondes or lighter blondes are fine to color at home as long as you stay within two shades of your highlights.
Prevent Staining
Wear the gloves to apply and rinse your color, gather your tools before you start, and wear an old button-up that you don’t mind getting hair color on if some should drip or spill. You can also smear a little Vaseline around your hairline and around your ears to prevent your skin from getting stained.
If you don’t have an old shirt you want possibly ruined, you can also pick up one of those capes the use at salons and wear it while you color.
Make sure you keep an old rag or towel handy to quickly wipe up spills to keep your counter and floor clean as a just-in-case.
Cover Up Grays
Grays can be tricky and stubborn but you can get rid of them with a root-touch-up kit or just using your regular shade as a touch-up kit. Thoroughly saturating your grays will help cover them up as well.
And remember, always de-tangle your hair before you begin coloring!
Sources:
Personal Experience
