One for all the brunettes out there today.

Have you ever dyed your hair brown and its faded out to orange or red tones even when you told the stylist you wanted no warm tones?

Well my friends the answer is simply science based.

All hair colour has what we hairdressers like to call, ‘underlying pigment/tones’.

This is a fancy way of saying that underneath the colour you have chosen, there is a warm colour hiding there, just waiting to get out!

One of the big differences with artificial hair colour and natural hair colour, is that natural hair does not fade as quickly as artificial, so you see that underlying pigment less often. This is why we automatically assume the hairdresser has put some sneaky warm colour in there.

Blonde hair has an underlying pigment of yellow and we have previously covered the yellow of blonde hair. A quick recap is that we need violet/purple to counteract the yellow, which is why so many blondes use a shampoo of this colour.

Mid brown hair has orange underlying pigment. Your hair can start out a beautiful cool mid brown shade and slowly through washing, those orange tones can start to peak through. Its the same for the darker brown tones except you will see more of a red colour coming through.

Yes you can have a combination of 2 of these colours, it simply depends on the level of the colour you and your hairdresser have chosen.

So what can we do about this?

Firstly your skilled hairdresser will know what colours to put into your hair colour to try and counteract these for you.

Now don’t freak out when I tell you this secret, but when we want less orange we use blue and less red we use green.

Green and blue, yup you heard me right!

Do you remember art at school when you mixed 2 colours together and they turn brown? This is what we do in hairdressing, we counteract the unwanted colour with purple for blondes, blue for mid brown and green for dark brown.

What else can we do?

Use professional products to nurture the hair colour you have had. If you’re not using the correct products, this fading process will happen even faster.

Sometimes there are special shampoos or conditioners that can be used in conjunction with your normal shampoo and conditioner that will stop the fade happening so quickly, your hairdresser will show these to you at your appointment.

The best thing to do is chat with your hairdresser and see what options they have available to you and as always please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

If you’d like to book an appointment to give your hair or scalp some love, I’d be happy to talk through it’s current condition as part of your initial consultation. All the details to make a booking can be found here.