In partnership with Revlon Professional.
Covering grey hairs, disguising regrowth, brightening balayage and avoiding a purple shampoo toning disaster.
Lockdown, and general reluctance to revisit the salon, has taken its toll on our tresses. While quarantine is generally a place in which one can safely experiment with beauty, some things are best left to those with training and expertise. One such beauty category? Hair colour.
Although our regular salon appointments have been deemed null and void for the time being, award winning hair colourist Yoshi Su tells me that there are a few ways to treat our hair woes (and remedy past DIY disasters) safely, from home. One such solution? Revlon Professional’s revolutionary Nutri Colour Crème, a world-first, three in one cocktail of colour, care and shine, developed to safely maintain colour, deepen pigment and alter tone between salon visits- a formula truly unlike anything I had ever come across, and one Yoshi genuinely and confidently recommends to his clients as a safe alternative to traditional at-home colour.
To ease your hair colour headaches, I took YOUR home colour questions to Yoshi. To listen to the full interview, subscribe to the Glow Journal podcast on iTunes and Spotify.
GLOW JOURNAL: I understand that colouring our hair at home is advised against by hairdressers. Firstly, why is that? And secondly, what’s the alternative?
YOSHI: If you’re someone who normally goes to a hair salon and has a hairdresser professionally colour your hair, they have experience. They won’t ruin your hair. To get a box colour is like… imagine walking along the street, finding someone and saying “Can you do my hair colour?” It’s pretty much exactly the same thing. “I want cinnamon blonde- can you give me that?”
Box colour is designed to fit everyone, and because they’re designed to fit everyone the strength is so high, in terms of peroxide. If you use a box colour, you risk getting the wrong colour as everyone has a different depth to their [existing colour]. Secondly, you can damage your hair, especially if you have already had your hair bleached, then you colour again with high peroxide.
So what can we do instead? We wouldn’t advise that anyone does a full head of colour at home, but is there anything that we can kind of do to give ourselves a touch up?
I would recommend something not so invasive- something that won’t permanently change your hair colour. So something without peroxide. Use something that really just coats the hair, like a toner. These sorts of colours can actually be quite nourishing for the hair, and they are more of a treatment. What I use in the salon is the Revlon Professional Nutri Colour Crème. They have, literally, every single colour for every person. We actually give it to clients just to touch up at home!
When we are looking for products that we can use to tone our colour or to erase any DIY disasters, are there specific ingredients that we should be either looking for, or avoiding?
Generally speaking, toning and erasing are two different things- toning is to correct the colour, erasing is to strip the colour.
Normally when toning the hair, you shouldn’t have to worry about it too much- only if you are personally allergic [to an ingredient in the product]. As long as you don’t use a permanent colour to tone your hair. A lot of clients don’t know what to use, so they just pick whatever and say “Okay, I like that, I’ll put that on my hair,” thinking it’s a toner. They might not know that it’s a permanent colour. Generally speaking, if you choose a product with an ingredient called paraphenylenediamine, or PPD for short, this is likely a permanent colour. That ingredient doesn’t exist in toner, so avoid PPD. This is actually the chemical that tries to hold the colour in the hair.
What can people with sensitive scalps do to ensure that their skin isn’t being irritated by any toners or treatments?
Skin test every product- not just hair colour. Treatments, everything.
Use a little Q tip, swab a bit of product, put it on your wrists or behind your ear, and put a little bit of tape on it so it doesn’t come off. Wait 48 hours, and see if your skin reacts to it.
Is it possible to apply at home toners or colour treatments to hair that has been keratin treated in salon?
You can, but there’s a trick. You have to make sure that after you’ve had the keratin treatment in the salon, wait two weeks before you do anything to it. If anything a treatment is fine, but with toner or anything similar, wait two weeks. If you are someone who likes to have a keratin treatment in your hair, meaning you are someone who wants to have silky, shiny hair, the conditioning is really important. So why do something that could ruin your hair’s condition?
Once we’re allowed back in salon, how do we best choose a new hair colour? How do we decide whether to go lighter or darker and how do we choose a shade to go with our skin tone and not wash us out?
It’s quite tricky, because it really depends on the person’s skin colour. We have so many clients come in with, say, a natural six level brown colour, but they’ve never liked their natural colour. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t look good on them, but it’s just not to their taste. That’s not how they want to present themselves. So you just have to really think about what’s more beneficial, in terms of your hair condition. If you want to go lighter, most people just go softer with a root shadow look, rather than straight onto the roots with highlights which require lots of maintenance. If you leave a little bit of root shadow of your natural colour, it will always work so much better with your skin tone. You won’t feel like you’re totally changing who you are.
Can people cover grey hairs at home? And, if so, how?!
If I have lots of grey hairs, I would probably just use some eyeshadow to cover it. What you can do is grab a light strength hairspray or a sea salt spray, spray it on wherever you want your greys covered, then apply your eyeshadow with an eyeshadow brush. The great thing is that eyeshadow comes in so many colours, you’ll be able to find one that works for you.
Basically, just don’t do anything to permanently change your hair.
Is there a way to cover dark regrowth in blonde hair? Or do we just have to pretend it’s ombré?
Honestly, dark regrowth is not something you want to play with at home.
So just put a hat on?
You can actually get away with it by just styling your hair with more volume. Sometimes I also recommend that my clients try and change their parting, because when you change the part from one side to another, you will get more volume out of it. When the hair has more volume, you don’t see the roots as much. You can also use dry shampoo in the hair to kind of lift the colour a little bit so it doesn’t look as high contrast. Another important thing is to tone your hair at home, because once the hair has been toned, it will always look much more blended.
And how can people tone their blonde hair at home?
With toner, we need to remember that purple shampoos are designed either for grey hair to make it more silvery, or to neutralise a little bit of the warmth in the hair. But it isn’t really toning the hair. It won’t give you the colour you want. Some of my clients who have a warmer colour will use a purple shampoo and I ask “Why are you doing that? It’s going to cool your hair down. It’s not for you.” It’s actually just making them look more ashy.
What I would recommend is to use the Revlon Professional Nutri Colour Crème at home. Find the colour for your hair, because there’s so many options there. Honestly, I have tried so many different similar types of colour, and this one is the easiest to use.
What is the best way to tone balayage to remove brassy tones? Would this process be different to watch you’ve just described?
Totally different, because you have to look at balayage as root shadow. You have multiple different tones from the roots to the ends.It really depends on where they’re targeting, because some people’s hair might be a similar brassiness all over, but for some it’s only on the mid lengths or the ends. Generally speaking, I probably wouldn’t try to fix it too much at home. You can just use the lightest, cleanest, platinum white toner, just to gently even it out a little bit.
Is there a way to clean up “over toned” blonde highlights, without attempting an at-home bleach job?
For over toned blonde, use a deep cleansing shampoo. Put the shampoo in, wrap it up, clip it, and watch Netflix. Get the mirror out, check it as you go and see how much it has cleaned out [the tone]. Do that daily for, let’s say, a week. But each time you use a deep cleansing shampoo, you have to use a treatment afterwards to balance it out because you’ll strip a lot of things out of your hair.
For those who have had highlights put in either in salon or they’ve attempted it at home but the highlights are too blonde, how can they warm up that colour a bit and bring the brightness back down?
Simple answer- Nutri Colour Crème 931. Just get that one. It’s a beautiful colour. It’s the most beautiful neutral, creamy colour, but not overly blonde. Get it, put it on your hair, and you’ll be fine.
If you want to go a little bit warmer, but a little bit of yellow into it with Nutri Colour Crème 300.
Is it possible to switch from a cool brunette to warm brunette at home using these treatments?
Cool tone to warm tone is probably easier to do. Warm tone to cool tone is really about how warm their [existing] hair colour is. Normally if you have warmth in the hair and you’re trying to cool it done, this will make the hair look darker. To warm up will brighten it. It really depends on how light the base is.
Something you can do to cool it down is to work a slightly pastel pink tone into it. In the Nutri Colour Crème there is a 000, which is clear, and you can use it to dilute any other colour in the range. You can use it to make everything a pastel. If you think a colour is too strong, you can dilute it. Pastel pink is the easiest way to make the hair colour cooler without looking dull or too ashy.
What is dying our hair repeatedly actually doing to our hair?
It depends if you colour lighter or colour darker. If you colour lighter, it’s a little bit more damaging, because lightening is stripping out the colour from your hair.
Darker hair is actually fine, as long as you don’t want to lighten it up afterwards. Lightening hair that has been coloured dark is different to lightening up a natural hair colour, because the chemical build up in the hair is much harder to lift.
Many people just think that colouring the hair is damaging it, but I have clients with naturally course, almost rough hair that looks damaged, and the molecule in the colour actually makes the hair look much shinier and healthier.
What is the very best way to remedy dry, damaged hair that has been coloured poorly, coloured too often, or just not treated the way that it should have been treated?
At least once a month, visit the salon to get a deep conditioning treatment. If the hair is in really, really bad condition, I tell clients to put a mask on their hair twice a week. Masking is so important, as is doing your shampoo right.
Another trick is, apart from doing a treatment, when you shampoo your hair, leave it on for five minutes before you rinse it off- and really rinse thoroughly. Make sure there’s nothing left, squeeze a bit of water out, put your treatment on and then leave it for five minutes- or even a few hours!
I recommend that my clients, at least once a month, use a deep cleansing shampoo. Have at least two different shampoos at home. Have a deep cleansing shampoo, and then have a shampoo that is actually designed for your hair type. The deep cleansing shampoo will get rid of excess product or build up, then use your normal shampoo.
In general, you just need to remember why you come into the salon. It’s because you know you want a professional result. You want the hair to look beautiful. You want that specific colour.
To learn more about Revlon Professional, visit revlonprofessional.com.
