 |
| hair color |
Anyone who wants to color hair professionally for a living has to know the secrets of hair coloring. The first thing to know is that all colors come from mixing just three basic colors together. The primary colors, as you may have learned in school, are red, yellow, and blue. The other colors we are familiar with are created by combining these colors in different proportions. You can see this by looking at a color wheel.
You need to understand what the primary colors are and what happens when you mix them because that can help you with coloring hair. For instance, you should know that a client with a yellow tone in her hair should not have a color with a blue base put on or the client's new tint may have a slight greenish hue to it.
The different hair coloring products available are all different and colorists need to understand their characteristics. The development time of hair coloring products, which is how long it takes for the color to get into the hair, is different for all products. All colors need different developing times for the results to be correct. Red needs the least developing time and orange, yellow, purple, blue, and green need more time in that order.
The tint is the combination of colors. If the development time is not correct, the tint on the hair is going to be uneven. There really is not a lot of concern about hair color staying on too long because after a certain point, the color is not going to continue to develop anymore.
Hair coloring is also affected by the tenacity of the different colors, which is how well they stick to and stay on your hair. The colors in order from strongest to weakest tenacity are green/purple, yellow/blue and orange/red. This is pretty much the opposite of the development time order. The condition of the hair you are working with is going to affect the tenacity of coarse hair not absorbing color as well as fine hair.
You also need to understand tones and shades to succeed at hair coloring. A tone is a variation of a color and a shade refers to the intensity of the color. Experienced colorists know that the chemicals in hair coloring products have the potential to be very damaging to the hair if not used correctly. That is why everyone involved with hair coloring needs to know all about the chemicals that are in products they use. This means understanding what these chemicals are and what can happen if they are not used correctly.
Hair colorists need to understand what the pH scale is and how it works. The pH scale has to do with the acidity or alkaline nature of a chemical. A neutral chemical is pH7. Chemicals with a lower pH level are acidic while those with a higher pH are alkaline. The pH levels of hair depends on the sebum and sweat that is found in the hair. These cause hair to be acidic. Most hair has is pH5. The hair tints and bleaches used in beauty shops are going to be alkaline substances and have to get into the hair shaft for the color to work. The alkaline nature of these hair coloring products allow them to open the hair shaft and penetrate.