Q & A: Color & Texture + Demis and Semis and Toners, oh my!

You guys rock, we got some really good questions on the last entry which actually bring me into topics I wanted to talk about next!

But before that lemme tell you a bit about what we at the salon did today, it was very exciting. Greg, April, Julia and I did the hair for the Style Box launch fashion show! Check out some of the pictures (thanks to Anita) here! and check out the Style Box website here! A big thanks to them for inviting us out, we had a great time!

Ok, the first question asked me whether coloring your hair will thicken your hair or not. Well, it kinda goes back into what I was talking about in the last entry about how color gets into your hair (see entry below!). Sometimes after a chemical process like coloring or perming, your hair can feel a bit fuller andhas a little more body. There is a reason for this...you're cuticle is damaged! Not necesarily to a point to be concerned about at all, but when the chemical opens up your hair shaft sometimes it damages it so that the cuticle can't lay back down quite as flat as it did before. This can happen if the hair color you use has a lot of ammonia (again, this is why I prefer using Paul Mitchell the color, which has the lowest and most consistent concentration of ammonia on the market), or if you pre-lighten (bleach) your hair. My hair is super super flat and straight and part of the reason I like keeping it blonde is cause it gives me lots of volume because of this very reason! If you click on the picture to the left you can compare for yourself; you'll see the blonde version lays less flat (and I used the same product in both, so it's not the product!). As a sidenote, this is why highlights [or some blonde color-blocking, like mine that Greg did for me!] are sometimes a good option for people looking for a little bit more volume or oomf in their hair!

Ok, and the second question had a few parts, and we'll take each in turn. To quote: " Jenn A. said... 'Mike, what's the deal with toner? my hairdresser gave me some highlights to mask my grey, but then put a toner on it because it was too blond imo. the toner seemd to get me the color i wanted, but since then, the highlights seem to have lightened with every shampooing. is it possible that my HD can put a toner on it again so it goes back to the orginial color i wanted? should i have used shampoo for color treated hair?'"

Toner is haircolor used on hair that's already been pre-lightened to either change the tone or darken it up in case it went just a little bit too light, and they're usually either semi-permanent or demi-permanent. So!, let me explain the differences between different types of color. There's permanent color, semi-permanent, demi-permanent, and temporary hair color. Temporary color is so because it doesn't penetrate the hair shaft in anyway. It doesn't lift the cuticle and merely deposits color molecules that stick to the hair shaft. The most common forms of this are color shampoos (not shampoo tha makes hair color last longer, but shampoo that actually deposits color, usually to help tone yellow shades, but I'm planning to get into this more in my next entry when I discuss purple shampoo), and all that spray-on junk you find in costume shops.

Semi-permanent color is just a step above temporary; the color molecules are small enough to get into the cuticle (but not into the cortex, like permanent hair color) and stain it, but also small enough to wash out easily, so they usually only last 4-6 weeks.

Demi-permanent is even a step above this, and the main difference is that demi-permanent use an oxidizing agents where semis do not. So what this means is that the demi-permanent is more like a "permanent color light", it acts like a permenent color using hydrogen peroxide to penetrate into the cortex, but with a much more dilute solution of it, so there's only deposit of color without breaking up the existing pigment. This means that a demi-permanent color can only make your hair darker because it's adding pigment on top of what's already in your hair. In my salon we do a LOT of demi-permanents. Paul Mitchell makes a transluscent demi-permanent glaze called PM Shines that lasts 6-8 weeks. It's a protein-based color so it ads lot of shine and silkiness back into your hair; imagine a color that actually improves the condition of your hair every time you use it! I do these on my clients (and on myself) whenever they're staying the same level of darkness or going darker cause they can feel such a difference whenever we use it as opposed to regular permanent color that can dry hair out sometimes. There's even a clear version we use as a treatment!

But anyways, toners are usually a color mixed with a low-volume peroxide and done on wet hair at the sink or we often even dry the hair and use a PM Shines on it; both are demi-permanent. Now because they're demi-permanent they are giong to fade faster than a regular permanent color would, and the fading will first be noticeable on the highlights because the base color the demi-permanent was put over is lighter, whereas the rest of the hair won't get any lighter than the color it was before the toner was applied.

Should you be using a color shampoo? Let me answer this one with a story. Our receptionist Serena got highlights put in a few months back on a whim and they were toned to a color she likes but by the next week they were totally orange. So I did a PM Shine over her whole head to tone down the orange and darken them up a bit, and by the next week they had faded out again!!! I couldn't figure out why, but what was I gonna do then? So we did another PM Shines, a little darker this time, and while I was at the sink washing it out I asked her what kind of stuff she was using on it at home. She told me she was using a Pantene clarying shampoo. What's a clarifying shampoo? Just what it sounds like, it's an acidic shampoo that opens your cuticle and strips out dirt. It's good for people that use a lot of product, or it's good to use like once a week for people that use really silky conditioners the rest of the time, to strip out build-up. But! It also strips out COLOR! So I told her she needed to start using a color-friendly shampoo, and she did, and her color lasted infinitely longer. So I definitely reccomend using a shampoo that's specifically made for color-treated hair, no matter what kind of color you've had done. At the shop we have a few in particular I reccomend, Greg May Color Continue shampoo and conditioner, Sixty Second Silk shampoo/conditioner (not made specifically for color, but has proteins in it that make it still very good to use on colored hair), and a special conditioner we have called Locked In. Locked In is actually really cool cause what it does is it deposits a layer of clear color molecules onto your hair that protects the colored color molecules! And makes your hair really shiny to boot.

I didn't get to the last question about bright vibrant colors tonight, but I will in the next entry, as well as the mystery behind purple shampoos!

And as always, all the products and services mentioned in this entry can be found at GREG MAY HAIR ARCHITECTS.