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All About Hair...and So Much More.
311: Hair Color
We dive deep into the chemistry behind hair color, explaining why blonde hair turns brassy and how different color formulations interact with your hair structure.
• Natural hair color comes from melanin - eumelanin (brown/black tones) and pheomelanin (red/golden tones)
• Hair structure consists of cuticle (outer layer), cortex (middle layer with pigment), and medulla (inner layer)
• Permanent hair color uses ammonia and peroxide to open cuticle, remove natural pigment, and deposit new color
• Demi-permanent color is gentler with no ammonia, slightly lifting the cuticle without removing natural pigment
• Semi-permanent color simply coats the outer hair layer, perfect for adding shine or subtle tones
• Different developer volumes (10, 20, 30, 40) serve specific purposes in lifting and depositing color
• Understanding the color wheel helps neutralize unwanted tones (blue cancels orange, purple neutralizes yellow)
• Individual factors like porosity, previous color history, medications, and minerals affect color results
• Strand tests are essential for predicting how hair will react to color and preventing disasters
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Have you ever wondered why your blonde hair turns brassy or why your color fades faster than your friends, even when you use the same products? Or maybe you're a stylist who wants to explain color without sounding like a chemistry teacher? In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what's really going on in that color bowl, from natural melanin to permanent versus demi versus semi, so why developer choice really matters. You're about to understand hair color on a whole new level. Whether you're behind the chair or just curious about your own hair, this is the science of color made simple, useful and, dare I say, pretty fun. Welcome to All About Hair, where we talk, shop, share stories and spill the secrets behind great hair and a great career. I'm your host, denise Kylitz, a former salon owner, educator and a lifelong hair crusader. Whether you're a new stylist building your book or just someone who loves learning about all things hair, you're in the right place. Each week, we dive into real techniques, honest career advice and inspiration to help you grow behind the chair or just fall even more in love with the world of hair, because around here, it's not just about looking good. It's about learning, evolving and having a little fun along the way. So grab your coffee, your shears or your dry shampoo and let's get into it. Hey there, and welcome back to All About Hair and so much more. I'm your host, denise Keilitz, a lifelong stylist, salon owner and hair educator with a passion for helping you understand what's going on above your shoulders, whether you're a stylist, a client or just curious about hair science.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is for you. We're going to go behind the scenes to break down what's really happening when you color your hair. Spoiler alert it's not just a pretty paste and a prayer. I know we've all prayed to the hair gods, but really there's some serious chemistry going on in that bowl. So let's start with what gives hair its natural color. Before we talk about coloring your hair, let's start with what gives it its color in the first place.
Speaker 1:Your natural hair color comes from melanin. That's the pigment that lives inside the cortex of each hair strand. Remember how I said there's three parts of the hair. I've said this on many of my videos and podcasts. There's the cuticle. That's the outside layer. It kind of looks like fish scales or a pine cone or tiles on a roof. Then there's the cortex. That's really the meat of your hair. That's the inner circle, and then there's the medulla. The medulla doesn't really do anything, so we're really going to concentrate on just the cuticle and the cortex. Inside the cortex of your hair is melanin, and there's two main types of melanin. There is eumelanin, which gives hair brown and black tones, and there's pheomelanin, which gives hair red and golden tones. Now the combination, the ratio and the concentration of these pigments create your unique shade, whether that's jet black, light ash blonde or copper red. As you age, your melanin production slows down, and that's when you get gray hair or white hair.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about the types of hair color. There's permanent, there's demi-permanent and there's semi-permanent, and they all behave on your hair differently. Okay, let's start with permanent hair color. This is the most powerful and the longest lasting. It uses ammonia or something similar, that's an alkaline agent and hydrogen peroxide, which is the developer, and what it does is it opens the cuticle Remember those fish scales opens it up, goes into the cortex of the hair, removes your natural pigment and then it replaces it with new color molecules deep inside your cortex. Permanent hair color is perfect for lightening your hair because it can lighten it or darkening your hair. It's great for full gray coverage and it's great for anybody who's looking for a long term change.
Speaker 1:So say you had brown hair. You wanted to be a redhead or a blonde or whatever. This doesn't wash out. It grows out, though it can fade a little bit over time depending on how well you maintain it. Remember I have a whole video on why does your hair turn brassy. And it does this because your permanent hair color remember. It goes in. It takes care of your, removes all your natural hair pigment not all of it a little bit and then it replaces it with this new color molecule. So if you're not taking care of your colored hair, your cuticle will open up, it releases some of those artificial color molecules and what's left is what your cortex looks like after the permanent color had removed your natural pigment, which is typically orangey, reddish, yellowish. It's not pretty. I know that's a full-blown explanation of that, but go watch that video. I'll link it in the show notes. Just know that permanent hair color typically grows out. If you're taking care of your hair and by taking care of it is you want to use sun protection, you want to make sure you're using products that seal down that cuticle of your hair every time, which is a good conditioner or some of the products that we use, help to shut that cuticle down. You don't want to use too much heat, you don't want to use stripping shampoos. You get the general idea right Now there's demi-permanent hair color.
Speaker 1:This is actually my favorite hair color to use, and why is that? It's because it's ammonia free and it uses a very low volume developer, so it's very gentle on the hair. It gently lifts the cuticle just enough to deposit pigment, but it doesn't lift or remove your natural hair color and I love this and even color gray hair. It depends on what line of color you're using. The line I use, euphora hair color. You can use a demi-permanent we call it no ammonia hair color to a hundred percent cover gray hair. It is beautiful. But you can also use demi-permanent hair color for blending gray hair, for refreshing faded hair color and for glossing and toning and it just makes it so it lasts just a little bit longer. But you can also use it.
Speaker 1:If you want to try out a new color, say you're like me, I have brown hair. Basic brown hair can also use it. If you want to try out a new color, say you're like me, I have brown hair, basic brown hair I don't know what you want to call it and I have some few highlighted pieces in there and sometimes those fade out. What if I wanted to do rose gold? But I don't want to be rose gold all the time. Well, I could use a demi-permanent hair color on my hair and it would last about 20 or 30 shampoos and it doesn't leave any harsh line of demarcation.
Speaker 1:I love this. Or say you were just refreshing the ends of your hair, wonderful. It doesn't open the cuticle anymore, it does not damage the hair anymore. You're not going to get any kind of lift out of it, just enough for that artificial color molecule to get underneath the cuticle of the hair. But it does fade gradually. This is also wonderful. Got to say wonderful for men's hair coloring, because it fades off the hair. Because when you're coloring men's hair, first of all do not use warm shades, only use ash shades. When you're coloring men's hair and you don't want a line of demarcation, no man wants his hair growing out from the roots. That is a telltale sign. Typically, they just want it to blend their gray and not 100% cover up.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about semi-permanent hair color. This is the most gentle of-permanent hair color. This is the most gentle of the three types of hair color no ammonia and no developer. This type just simply coats the outer layer of the hair or kind of slightly sinks into the first like layer of cuticle. It just depends on how porous your hair is. If you've got very porous hair, that color is going to penetrate just a little bit more because you don't have any protective of cuticle. It just depends on how porous your hair is. If you've got very porous hair, that color is going to penetrate just a little bit more because you don't have any protective outer shell to protect your cortex. But it shouldn't affect your natural hair color at all. Again, if your hair is extra porous, it might get into the cortex and it actually might stain your hair. So that's a quick tip. If you've been pre-lightened a long time ago or even last week, it might absorb more semi-permanent pigment and hold onto it longer than you expected. So be careful with that.
Speaker 1:But semi-permanent hair color is wonderful for adding shine or a subtle tone, especially like if you just got highlighted and you want to take the yellow underlying pigment and balance that out. You would use a semi-permanent or a toner. You can also play with fashion colors. Most fashion colors are semi-permanent hair color. They just coat the outside strands of the hair and it's also great for people who are just starting out with color, say you're brand new to color or you don't really want a commitment at all. Maybe you have a special occasion to go to, maybe for Halloween you're dressing up in costume and you want red hair, be a clown or something. Make sure your hair is not porous, because I've had lots of clients who made that mistake by putting a semi-permanent. You know they bought it at the Halloween store and it said semi-permanent hair color and it actually stained their hair. So just be careful. If you're going to go that route, make sure you go to a professional who can do it for you. Most semi-permanent hair colors last anywhere between four and 12 shampoos. It depends on what product you're using and it depends on your hair type.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that we know the differences between permanent, demi-permanent, semi-permanent, let's talk about the chemistry of permanent hair color. Most salons out there still use permanent hair color the most. Still use permanent hair color the most. So why is that? I've already told you that demi-permanent is my favorite go-to and I probably have two thirds of my color cabinet is demi-permanent versus a third permanent, because my clientele is mostly gray or they're going darker or they're just wanting to brighten up. So there's a lot you can do with demi-permanent color, but we're going to talk about how permanent color works. The process starts by using ammonia to lift the cuticle layer of the hair strand. That's like opening a window to get into the house and then it uses hydrogen peroxide and that's what does the work. It begins to oxidize and lighten your natural melanin inside the cortex of your hair and, at the same time, this new synthetic dye molecule that you've just introduced that's going into the cortex and then that new color molecule develops and expands and it locks in the new hair color. This is why the result is so long lasting. The color is literally built inside your hair's cortex.
Speaker 1:You've probably heard of different volumes of developer. So why does this matter? Why do developers matter in the first place? Why can't you just have a bottle of developer and go to town? Well, it's not something we just grab off the shelf and play around with. It's actually a really big, key part of the formula, because different volumes of developer serve different purposes. There are developers anywhere from five volume developers, developers, heck, all the way up to 70 volume. I don't think in the united states 70 volume is is. You can even get it. You might be able to. I've never used that. The highest I've ever used is 40 volume. But I have everything in my arsenal from 5, 7, 10, 20, 30 and 40. I actually Guarantee you that 15 really comes in handy when you don't want to lift too much but you want to cover. That's a whole other podcast, but let's just talk about the top four that you probably have or have heard of, and if you're a colorist, they're probably in your cabinet, or if you're a new stylist, so you have 10 volume.
Speaker 1:This opens the cuticle but it doesn't lift the natural hair color. Typically this is perfect for deposit only color like your demi permanence. And the reason why it says it doesn't lift the natural color most of the time is because if your hair is really fine, it will lift your hair color. Trust me, I've made that mistake many, many times, thinking that my 10 volume was going to be safe. And it wasn't. And it is. It is lifted at the root, especially when you have that heat at the scalp. So be really careful with that If you're thinking that you're going to put 10 volume on and you're not going to get lift. You might get hot roots. So if you can find yourself a five volume or a seven volume, that might be your volume of choice for something like that, especially with root smudges, you know those are very popular nowadays.
Speaker 1:20 volume this is the workhorse, it seems like in most salons. This lifts your levels one to two. Now a level is, say it's on a scale of one to 10, one being the darkest black, 10 being the lightest blonde, and each level goes through another color. So you're going from black to dark brown. You know, medium brown, lighter brown. Every color line calls them something different. 20 volume would lift one to two levels and it is your standard for gray coverage in most color lines, because what it does is it lifts and deposits.
Speaker 1:Remember when I was just talking about how color works, especially for permanent hair color. 30 volume lifts two to three levels. Why would you use 30 volume? Well, say you have somebody that's a level six and they want to be a level eight copper, you would need to use a 30 volume to raise them up two to three levels so then you can deposit the color on top of that. 20 volume wouldn't get you there because it only raises it up one to two levels. Make sense.
Speaker 1:This is on natural hair, not pre-pigmented hair, not pre-colored hair. This is if you had somebody or you yourself have virgin natural hair and you wanted it to be two to three shades lighter using color, you would use a 30 volume developer 40 volume this is used for high lift blondes or in some lighteners. But handle with care because it really does open that cuticle quickly and sometimes quickly is not what you want. Now I do use 40 volume from my high lift color because you need that to open up the cuticle and deposit it, because it's we're actually working at like 11 and 12 level, which I told you. There's only one to 10. So this is, it doesn't have much pigment in it. So you need the 40 volume to actually break down more of the natural pigment in the hair to deposit these really, really fine, beautiful blonde pigments in the hair. These are wonderful.
Speaker 1:For if you are level seven, which is kind of like a dark blonde or lighter, and you wanted highlights without using bleach, you would use a high lift blonde with double 40 developer In most cases. I know a lot of stylists just reach for bleach and they just go to town and then they tone right out over that. Tell you the truth. I mean that is quick and that is a no brainer, but I prefer and anybody who knows me knows that I prefer to use a high lift blonde if I can On my type of hair. Could I use a high lift blonde? I could, but it doesn't have enough tint in it, enough dye load to actually tone my hair and plus, I have color on my hair. So this is hypothetical.
Speaker 1:If you see my picture, my level of hair color is in between a five and a six, so it's basically brown hair, right, and then it has some highlights. Sometimes, if I get bored, I do use a lightener for mine because I have color on my hair but pretend like I didn't. I could use a high lift blonde. It would lift me about two to three shades, but a high lift blonde, like I said, doesn't have much dye load to it, so I would still have to tone my hair. That's a lot on high lift blondes, but I love high lift blondes and so if you're not using them, if your color line has them and you're not utilizing them, I would highly suggest take a class on them or really you know, try them out, use them on swatches, see what they could really do to you. But it's really for level seven, eight, nine, natural hair. That's when you use the high lift blonde.
Speaker 1:And I use them for highlights. You could use them in all over color, but mostly highlights Developers. Why do they matter? If you use the wrong developer, this can lead to uneven results, breakage or simply color that doesn't last. You got to know what developer to use for the outcome that you're trying to get. It's not a guess, it's a strategy, it's part of the formula.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about toning and understanding the underlying pigment Toners. These are your best friends. When you are lightening the hair, like I just mentioned, most stylists go in. They use bleach or a lightener. We never called it bleach in the salon, just FYI, but it's the same thing. Bleach and lightener are the same thing. So when you lighten your hair, you expose what we call the underlying pigment and this is the natural warmth hiding beneath the surface. For example, if you lift black hair to brown, you often expose a red underlying pigment which you would probably want to neutralize out. And if you're lifting dark, brown or blonde hair, this often exposes orange or yellow, which, again, you typically want to neutralize out. So this is when you would come up with your color wheel.
Speaker 1:Remember in school we had the color wheel in art class. Go to the color wheel and the very opposite color of what you're trying to neutralize will cancel that out. So say, you just pulled orange underlying pigment. You would want to go to the opposite side of the color wheel, which is blue, to neutralize the orange in your hair. Purple cancels yellow, green cancels red. Or you can enhance those colors. So say, you took somebody brown and you lifted them to orange and they really want to be copper. Well, heck, there's your base right there. You don't have to do much to get them a beautiful copper color. See how that works. Typically, though, we're trying to neutralize or balance the color. So it really you got to really know what you're trying to balance and pay attention to the color wheel. The color wheel does not lie.
Speaker 1:So many times I have seen people with brown hair with orange highlights and they're trying to use a purple shampoo and they're wondering why doesn't this work on me? Because purple doesn't neutralize orange. There's not enough pigment in that. Purple neutralizes the yellow in the hair, but you're still going to have orange in your hair. So if you have brown hair and you got orange undertones, you're going to need a blue shampoo or a blue conditioner or a blue toner or something with a blue background to it, because If you don't tone your hair, I'm a believer that every time you highlight somebody's hair with bleach or lightener, you really do need to tone it.
Speaker 1:Even if it came out exactly what you wanted, it is still raw hair. It's like raw material, and you need to seal that cuticle back down. Even if it's just with clear gloss, you need to tone it with something, because the toner really makes it look polished and customized and completely intentional, if you know what I mean. If you just bleach somebody's hair and you leave it like that, doesn't it look like bleached hair? Yes, it does so. Look at their skin tone, look at the eye color. Figure out what toner you want. If you're trying to cancel out the yellow and they've got blue eyes, guess what? A nice, beautiful, cool, icy blonde, whatever. See how you can be an artist with this. It's up to you as a stylist and up to you as as the client too, or somebody who just really loves hair.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you look at somebody or look at yourself and you're like something's off. I just can't put my finger on it and it could just be the tone of your hair. It's just not going with your skin tone, with your eye color, something, and it could just be a little off and you just need to neutralize it. That's where the color wheel comes in handy. How come you can't take one formula and apply it to the same brown headed client? How come you can't take one formula and apply it to the same brown headed client? You know and I know we have level six clients all day, every day, great touch-ups, all that. How come you can't just pull a tube of six in and stick it on the same person and get the same results? You cannot, you cannot. Used to be able. I mean, we used to say you could, but you cannot. Everybody is different. Have you ever had a client that came in and said my friend used the same box color and looked totally different on me? It's because nobody's the same.
Speaker 1:Things like hair porosity, past hair color history. If you have old hair color on your hair, color will not remove color. You will have to use some kind of bleach or lightener to remove the color. Color on your hair. Color will not remove color. You will have to use some kind of bleach or lightener to remove the color out of your hair. Sorry to say I don't know how many times I've had to say that Color does not remove color. Color does not remove color.
Speaker 1:If you have color on your hair, you cannot put another color on top of that and expect it to lighten your hair color. It doesn't work that way. Plus, there's medications in our system. There's mineral buildup. What if you live in a place that has a high mineral content in your water? That really does turn your hair brassy and it will really do a number on your hair and react with the chemicals of a hair color or lightener If you do not get those minerals off your hair before you start the process of coloring hair color or lightener, if you do not get those minerals off your hair before you start the process of coloring your hair. And then, of course, let's not forget hormonal changes. Holy cow, add that to the list, right? This all affects how your hair reacts to artificial hair color. That's why a professional consultation with your hairstylist and sometimes even a strand test Strand tests in the salon have saved us so much work in the end, especially knowing that somebody with really long hair comes in and they said, oh no, I haven't colored my hair in years but their hair's really long and you know that on the ends there's going to be some hair color on there.
Speaker 1:So, taking a test strand, you just take a little clip, cut some out of the back or do it on their head. I mean, if they want to stick around, sometimes we used to just cut a little tiny piece, like a half an inch piece, and we would test it in our downtime, put some lightener on there with different volume, see if it even came out. Even, because most of the time that old hair color, even with lightener, it'll turn orange, depending on what they had on their hair, whereas the fresh growth would lighten really really fast. Or sometimes even the old hair that had the color on it would turn to mush because it's just been over, over processed so many times. So instead of going in and trying to color all their hair and give them everything they want in one sitting, when you don't know their history, man, I tell you test strand can be the difference between a beautiful transformation or a horrible disaster.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm laughing because it's a terrible thing to happen when it happens to you and many times, brand new stylists. It seems like they just really want to do a good job, whether it's for the client, for themselves or for the salon owner. They just want to prove themselves, and so they'll take on a situation that they probably shouldn't, and they think that taking a strand test um makes them look weak. Somehow it doesn't so okay. So there you have it. Hair color Isn't just beauty, it's biology, it's chemistry, it's artistry all wrapped into one. The next time you see that formula on your color bowl, just know it's a custom creation built on science and experience.
Speaker 1:If today's topic helped you better understand the magic and science of hair color, I'd love for you to share it. Leave me a review or send me a message with your biggest takeaway. And don't forget, click the link below to grab your free downloadable hair color science cheat sheet so you can keep this info handy whether you're behind the chair or in the mirror at home, and remember when you know better, you do better. Thanks for tuning in to All About Hair. If you loved this episode, hit subscribe, leave us a review and share it with a fellow stylist or hair-loving friend. You want more tips, tools and behind-the-scenes goodness? Follow me on YouTube or head to my website at denisekeilitzcom. Yes, I know it's hard to spell, so don't worry, the link is in the show notes. Until next time, keep learning, keep creating and keep loving what you do.
