How To Get Gray Hair To Cover At The Roots

The following are a few tricks to help get gray hair to take better at the roots. If you are having this problem you are not alone, more women complain about this one problem than any other hair color problem…other than breakage.  First, you will see a few problems, then you will see just how easy it is to get gray root coverage.

Why Gray Roots Don’t Take:

• The re-growth is too long
• The scalp is too oily or the hair is soiled
• The hair color formula has too much water in it
• The hair color formula was not mixed correctly
• The product was not processed long enough
• The hair was not shampooed before the color application
• The hair has too much product build up

Most women I know have this happen every time they have hair color, and just don’t know how to solve this problem…and I am sorry to say some hairdressers are also unclear about just how to correct this lack of coverage.  As some of you may have found gray roots often won’t even cover with only 10% gray so follow the same steps below to correct the problem.

Eliminate Gray Roots:

1. If your hair is oily or soiled from working out or if you have not shampooed for two days… shampoo before hair color service. Don’t use a conditioner until after hair color.
2. If you want full gray coverage don’t ever go longer than 4 weeks for your re-touch. The roots will be too long to get full coverage, the formula needs heat and the scalp supplies this. You also need to apply the formula well so the roots will cover whether they are natural or gray. Most people that use hair color don’t use enough formula on the roots for full color deposit. Your formula doesn’t need to run down the face; it just needs to cover the roots thoroughly so the gray hair will take. If you are coloring your hair at home be sure to buy two boxes if you need to cover a big re-growth.
3. Hair color formulas need the exact hair color and developers when mixing them together. Often those mixing the formulas are a bit careless. If you are using liquid peroxide you can also use about ¼ less and get better coverage. Also make sure you measure correctly. Cream developers do hold the formula closer to the scalp which will help the formula develop better because of the heat from the scalp.
4. Read the directions and make sure you follow them If the formula is weak it will not cover the gray. If you add too much peroxide the formula will be watered down so it will weaken the final results.
5. If you have a lot of gray hair you might need to process the hair color for 10-15 minutes longer. Also, make sure you’re in a warm place the color will take better …you can even place a baggie over your hair to keep the heat in while the hair processes.
6. This will cover the last two problems…ALWAYS shampoo your hair before the service.  If you haven’t shampooed after the gym, if your scalp is oily from a workout, or if you have hair product build up; gray hair will not take at the roots. When you do shampoo wait until after the color processes…then rinse only and condition. Hair Color does not make your hair dirty so just rinse it and then condition.

Good luck with this, and remember if you have a problem please contact me with your questions.

Is Changing Bad Hair Color Impossible?

I have just read an article about bad hair color and just how difficult it is to get it back to a pleasing color for the client because she had used At-Home hair color, and messed up part of her hair trying to do her own highlights, to save money. Her highlights were too gold. The opinion was that it would take years to correct the hair color and that doing your hair at home was unsafe. The following will help to clarify the difference of the over the counter product and the salon product.

I have worked on both sides during my extensive career so I do know the real difference between drugstore and salon hair color.  You may be surprised with my following answer. Oh, you can also find the answer to correct these gold highlights later in this report.

Packaging and Cost

The difference in the hair color products that are presently in the market place is the packaging and the cost. Of course if you have really messed up your hair by trying to do something complicated you will need to go to the proper professional and have it fixed, which could take a few hours and cost more than you have paid for the box in the drugstore.

This is the reason I have always said to not change your hair color more than one or two shades and to not do all over highlights if you don’t know anything about it…cause if you break your hair off you will not be happy. This being said you could also get breakage by going to an inexpensive salon where you might find someone that is not as educated in all areas of hair color. Either way, you will end up paying because you will be charged in the salon even if the person doesn’t know how to do a particular hair color process. Often when this happens you leave and the next day you will need to call the manager to try to come to an agreement of how to solve the problem. This is why it is better to get it right in the first place, by only going to highly recommended salons. This is easy, you simply see someone’s hair you like and ask where they had it done

Chemicals

All hair color chemicals (at the major hair color companies) are put into huge vats that mix the chemicals to be filled into bottles or tubes. These vats are as big as a normal living room (well almost) these companies don’t have some of these huge containers for some chemicals and some for others…it doesn’t work that way. All drug store, beauty supply and salons hair color is mixed in one container. The quality is the same.

The other fact is very simple.  Why would these companies make hair color for one hair color product that is less in quality than another product? They wouldn’t because if they were to lose quality control in their product they wouldn’t have a business making millions a year. Their reputations would truly be on the line. I know this as a hair color product owner even if I am not in their financial position.  If I put out bad hair color my reputation will go down. So why would I do that? We put out the very best hair color products that are available whether sold in the drugstore, beauty supply store or whether it is use by the professional.

• Some products may be a bit more complicated to use than others but the product in the bottle or container is quality. We have rules to follow when we sell in the market place.
• Some products may not have ammonia or peroxide in the formula like my product coloursplash! and others will have different hair chemicals in their products. This can be checked out because we are required to make quality products when we sell.

The Professional and the At-Home Colorist

There is often a very big difference in the two mainly in the knowledge of what really happens when hair color formulas are place on the hair. The women that do their hair at home generally do it because they want to have beautiful hair color and simply can’t afford to go to the salon for many reasons.

The main reason is because of their budget. What they don’t know is how to go from brown to blonde without getting too much orange and they are generally not that good with highlights.  Often getting dried out or broken hair. Plus they often make their brown hair just too red; which most just can’t stand. The better professional knows just what to do to get good results because they were professionally trained by others that were trained by others that were great in their profession. This does not happen in Beauty School it happens when the professional has taken it upon themselves to search out the very best to be trained by. It could take about a year for someone that has a high desire to be the very best. Unfortunately, most don’t go this far. As a trainer this has always been very sad for me.

The final note on this is simply this, in a most recent hair color report it is found that women can be just as unhappy with their hair when they pay a good amount in the salon as they are when they do it themselves at home. It’s kind of like using a house keeper. I have never met a woman that can’t clean their house almost as well as their house keeper if they put their mind to it …without all the broken glass. And I have yet to meet the woman that colors her own hair that doesn’t think she can do as good a job as the hairdresser.

If you are thinking of doing your own hair at home I hope you think it through before you start. Because as a professional I have yet to see someone that is uneducated in hair color, do their hair color better than a well trained professional. There are many ways to get inexpensive hair color in a salon. And there are ways to cut the cost of hair color. All you need to do is call and ask.

OH! Almost forgot the answer to the problem in the first paragraph is easily solved. All you need to do if your highlights are too gold is to tint over them and start again. Or my preference is go to the good salon and see that this can be corrected in about a half hour with a color conditioner. All the gold highlights needed was a product to neutralize the gold.

Yes Hair Color is SAFE…

I am glad to say all hair color products in the market place at the present time are safe; including the Eco-Hair Color product, but more on ECO the next time…this one will be good, so check back.