Hair Color Correction (Cont'd)

Hair color correction is always a unique situation. There are almost always many different things going on; the client has usually attempted to "fix" it either by herself, or allowing the original incompetent person to "undo" whatever was done. It is usually worse than the original.

 Elizabeth first came to us with a magenta mess! The blue combined with the red was destroying her skin tone. All she needed was some black and she could hold her own with the Goth Crowd. Click the photo to see the before and after in detail.

 
Amanda and I wanted to also show you the ends of Elizabeth's hair. Not only was the Blue/Red not working with her skin tone; but it wasn't even consistently dispersed to the ends of her hair. She had Blue/Red on top and pink fuzz on the ends.  

Most people don't understand that artificial hair color can not change artificial hair color (a blond can't lighten a brown); it only works effectively on virgin hair. So the first step that Amanda had to perform was to remove the wrong color (Blue/Red) from the hairshaft. To do this we used a gentle enzyme product designed for this purpose; bleach was not required or used. I warned Elizabeth before we started that the inbetween stage after this step would be scary.  Since this was an unscheduled emergency for her; she had her little one in tow (background). He was happy with his new Playstation II.

  
This is where we arrived after the enzyme color removal process. Click and you can see about an inch of her natural god-given color (it had not been turned Blue/Red) at the scalp. The midshafts have now been cleaned of the magenta and are a pale yellow and suitable as a base for the color we will create for her next (a browner red with some copper kick). You will also notice that her pink fuzzy ends. We purposely left them alone for two reasons: One, they are very fragile and overprocessed; Two, we knew that we would be able to successfully cover them with our new color. Only the Blue/Red was too dominant and had to be removed.  
After a creative evaluation of Elizabeth's skin and eye color as well as an evaluation of what her hair was capable of sustaining, Amanda decided on our formula. Amanda expertly applied her formula which actually consisted of 3 different formulas. Artificial hair color is not paint; it blends with the existing color to create a combination. Since there were now 3 colors (natural/virgin at scalp; midshaft with blue/red removed;  pink ends) three different formulations were required to get each section to become the color we wanted.    PS: Playstation is becoming boring  

 

And here is the finished product. Both Amanda and Elizabeth are happy with the results. In a few days I will show you the technique Amanda used to create Elizabeth's natural Soft Curl Style without making it big and outdated. hint: she used a flat iron; yes I said flat, not curl, iron.

  

When dealing with color correction it is imperative that the stylist have a strong foundation and understanding of color theory AND an internal ability to evaluate the hair's remaining integrity. This internal ability can't be learned; it must come from experience. I have always remembered what Cary Carter taught me years ago: "A good colorist isn't someone who doesn't make mistakes, it is someone who knows how to correct his mistakes".

Thanks for reading,  -todd