Blonde & Regular Color Corrections!

Hey Beauties! It's been a while since I posted because I'm actually working on a brand new website! I've also been very busy with clients so I apologize for my absence. 

Today I'm talking about blonde color corrections and normal color corrections. What is a blonde color correction and how does it differ from a normal color correction? Well typically a blonde color correction is someone who has dark hair wanting to go blonde. A normal color correction is usually someone who used box color on their hair themselves and now needs it fixed. 

I recently had a client come in for a blonde color correction and she was not happy her black hair that was now orange from someone else coloring it, wasn't white blonde in one appointment. To me it made perfect sense, but to her and probably a lot of others they have no idea why I can't take your almost black hair or even orange hair, a beautiful sun kissed blonde in one appointment. So here I am to give you the low down on color corrections! 

First of all a lot of stylists want to make their clients happy and will promise things they can't do (unless you want all your hair to break off and fall out) and that always results in an unhappy client with damaged hair. It's hard for us stylist to tell clients we can't get their desired results that day. We always want to have our clients leave with their perfect hair, but with color corrections that's not always the case. It's so important for me to educate my clients on their hair and what we are doing so we don't have those moments of unhappiness. Typically You should expect it to take your hair about a year to get from a dark color to blonde. This is just a general time line so some may take less or more time, but for the most part your looking at a year long process. Why you ask? Well here's a very basic answer. (If you want to know exact information please email me) When you color your hair dark you are filling the hair cuticles with that dark color making it harder and harder to take out each time. The longer you have colored your hair dark the longer it will take to color it blonde. Here are a few things you need to think about before you decide to go blonde from dark: 

1. Are you willing to be patient and take the time to do it right and be patient with your hair AND your stylist? 

2. Are you willing to have your hair turn orange and/or yellow at some point in the process? 

3. Are you willing to spend the money to to have it done right and not damage your hair completely? 

You might be concerned about number 2 and why your hair will be orange or yellow. That is because that's what dark color looks like with Lightener over it. It's an unavoidable stage of the blonde process. A lot of people don't know this though and freak out and think the stylist did something wrong. They didn't do anything wrong though it just means you're one step closer to achieving the color you want. It's an unfortunate and very not fun part of this process. Now there are two different routes you can take with color corrections, the cheap version or the right version that is not going to be very cheap. A lot of people try to save money and color their hair by themselves with box color and all I have to say about this is DONT DO IT!! You end up having to pay more for a stylist to fix your hair. I had a client come in with red box color from Walmart she had done the night before. She wanted it to be a light ash brown and spend as little as possible. Well to achieve that brown I would have to strip her hair of all the color, bleach it out, and then color it light brown. That normally would price out at about $140+ and she didn't want to spend that. So her second option was to just do an all over color which is about $85 with a really dark brown to cover the red and hopefully it would cover it all and not fade too fast. She choose the second option to save money, but I couldn't guarentee the red would all cover. Trust me it's worth it to spend the extra money to have it done right!! 

Now I want to talk to about the amazing product Olaplex that I use on all my blonde color corrections (and any client with damaged hair.) What Olaplex basically does is repair the bonds in your hair as it lifts the color to blonde. When you color your hair it is breaking bonds and that results in breakage. Olaplex restores those bonds and leaves the hair intact. Now we can speed up the blonde process and we can do colors that otherwise would result in a lot of breakage. Olaplex is not a magic wand though. We still cannot go from black to white blonde in one appointment. It is however pretty amazing. I can get a client much more blonde in one appointment with their hair still healthy that would otherwise probably take me two or three appointments. Every client I have used it on has left with even healthier hair than when they came in. I absolutely recommend going to a stylist that uses Olaplex if you're going blonde from dark or have super damaged hair. 

Hopefully I have covered everything you need to know about color corrections, but don't hesitate to email me if you have any other questions :) I'll post some pictures below of two color corrections I did recently and tell you what I did :)  

This is Lida. She Had her hair colored black in October of 2013 by another stylist. (This is faded a bit from what it was) she didn't love the dark and started going back blonde. She didn't want any damage done to her hair so she went really slow with the process. 

This was a year and a half after trying to go blonde. Her previous stylist was only touching up her roots every time to avoid damage on her ends. While it's good to avoid damage when going blonde from dark you have to expect some damage and need to go to the ends every time or every other time or you get all the different lines of color you see in her hair. Like I said before Olaplex is the best to use in these situations because I can go all the way to her ends with little to no damage! 

Here is the final result!! For her color I used Joico Lightener With 20 vol. through the front and 30 vol. through the back. Lida was so concerned about her hair breaking off, but because we used Olaplex I only had about 15 strands of hair in my brush! You lose more hair than that every day! You can even tell that it looks much more healthy in her after picture because of Olaplex. After she processed I toned her with Aloxxi Romance On The Rialto (10P lightest violet ash blonde) before Olaplex getting that much dark out in one appointment would have left her ends fried and we would have had to do it in 3 or 4 appointments. We still need to color her once more to get it perfect, but I'm more than happy with how it turned out!! 

Color Correction #2 

This client came in and wanted us to fix her red she had just done the night before. She used box color from Walmart and that is such a big no no!! She was trying to save money (like I mentioned before) but ended up costing herself more and didn't get the results she wanted. I'll probably repeat myself a few times here so I'll apologize in advance. She asked me to take her to a light ash brown and showed me pictures of girls with level 7-8 hair color. (That's like a dirty blonde) Now this is where communication comes into play and showing clients what the different colors and levels are is so important. I'll expand on this a little later. I gave her two options for this. One was to strip all the red from her hair, Lighten her hair, and then put the light brown or dark blonde color over top. That would be a lengthy, and expensive process though, but give her exactly what she wanted. Her second option was to put a darker brown than she wanted (at least a level 5) on as an all over color to cover up the red. There was no guarentee though that the red would completely cover and if it did, wouldn't start to show once her color began to fade. I also had no idea what other colors were on her hair and how this would react. This option was much cheaper though being an all over with Olaplex on her hair length was $85 and the color correction she wanted was $140+. My suggestion to her and anyone is to save up to have it done right. I know we hate to walk around with our hair all messed up, but trust me it will save you time and money in the future!! You won't have to come back so often to cover that red or whatever color is underneath. Now let's see her results! 

It turned out much better than I anticipated! You can still see the tint of red in her hair, but it looks more natural and like it's supposed to be there rather than just red splotches everywhere. I ended up putting Aloxxi's Full of Bologna (5A Light Ash Brown) with 10 vol. and Olaplex. This is where that communication I was talking about comes into play. If she had just told me a light ash brown I would have taken out my 5A and put it all over and thought I had got a perfect color. Color means different things to everyone so it's so important as a client to show pictures and really communicate what you want. It's also extremely important on my part to educate my clients on the different colors and options they have with their hair. Now let's get back to her color. I let her sit under heat for 30 minutes and then washed her with Smooth Sexy Hair's smoothing Shampoo and Conditoner. Another stylist at the salon actually cut her hair because of a scheduling conflict. I think considering everything she had on her hair it turned out pretty darn good. She was pleased with it and at the end of the day that's all that matters. Thanks for reading beauties!! And next time you go to throw box color on your hair DONT! And come see me! Much love! 

Xx 

Sierra