Correcting the "ORANGE" Hair Tone!

Many people try to highlight their hair at home, then become horrified when they see "orange!"

This blog will help you understand the facts on how to neutralize the orange!

While I attended beauty school, Mrs. Caldwell's favorite saying was:

"Know the basics! Everything we do in cosmetology

will bring us back to the basics."

For me, hair coloring was the hardest subject to learn in beauty school. It was not until I had my own salon and started to experiment with Matrix SoColor that the color wheel and the basic knowledge, I acquired about color, came to life for me. In this blog I want to share some basics of the color wheel and the levels hair goes through when lightening the hair, and how you can neutralize the "orange" that can emerge.

1. Know the Color Wheel and the contrasting colors !

In hair coloring, to have success in the final results, the most important thing to know is the color wheel.

 Hair has under-lying tones (mostly red shades) the color opposite on the color wheel will tone out the unwanted tone. Green Neutralizes red, Blue neutralizes orange and violet neutralizes yellow.

2. Know the 10 stages of Highlighting the Hair!

There are ten levels to the natural hair colors.

  Red tones in the hair are the hardest color to lighten out of the hair and the hardest to stay in. As you can see in the chart above red covers 80% of the chart, stating with the dark brown up to the orange, but does not stop there. YES...... When you are dealing with hair, there may be under-lying tones of red (very small amount) that will reach up to the yellow/gold level. That is where people don't realize there is still a small amount of red that needs taken out by highlighting more or neutralized.

3. Know What Hair-Type You Are Dealing With!

When highlighting hair there are two things that are vital to the results.

1.      Is the hair Virgin-- never colored?

2.      Is the hair previously colored?

 Highlighting virgin hair is different from highlighting already colored hair.

Artificially colored hair has a coating, whatever color was put into the hair.  IT takes more time and a higher volume of processor to lighten already colored hair.







4. Know What Product You Will Use!

Different manufacturer, such as Paul Mitchell, Wella, Redken, (for licensed professional) or Salon Care which can be purchased from Sally's beauty supply, for the non-licensed person. use there own developers with their highlighters, but the use is basically the same to lift the color out of the hair shaft.



5-10 Volume Peroxide The energy or strength of this developer is used for semi-permanent, no-lift hair color. Designed for deposit only. If you want to add a tint or color tone to hair of the same lightness level, it has enough strength to open the cuticle layer of the hair allowing the color molecules to penetrate and color to be deposited in the cortex.

20 Volume Peroxide The energy or strength of this developer commonly used with permanent hair color and opens the hair cuticle like 10 Volume, but also offers lifting of the hair's level by 1-to-2 levels. 20 Volume Peroxide is used to best effect when the hairs starting level is no more than one shade darker than the color you are trying to achieve.

30 Volume Peroxide When highlighting hair, the energy or strength of this developer works just like 20 Volume except that it will lift the hair's starting color by 2-to-3 levels and works best when the target color is no more than two levels lighter than the starting color

40-50 Volume Peroxide The energy or strength of this developer is designed to lift 4-5 levels when highlighting.

It's important to remember that the stronger the developer is, the harsher it can be on your hair.

You should always use a moisturizing conditioner after applying a stronger hair color.



5. Just Do It!

The best way to see how all of this works is to experiment and do it. If you are not a student of cosmetology, you can purchase an all-natural-hair manikin head online and experiment like they do in beauty school.

Try using the different levels of developer on small subsections of the head until you feel comfortable trying it on yourself or someone else.

My granddaughter's "Color ART"