Underlying pigment, question for hair

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tiatia22

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Am i right in thinking when you are lifting hair colour, you are looking at the natural pigment eg client is a base 5 wanting a 7/0 . So you look at 5 having red/orange pigment not looking at the 7 underlying pigment??
So if someones a base 5 you will have to counteract the red no matter how light you lift them.
If someones a base 8 wanting a 12/0 you will have to counteract the yellow from the base 8 underlying pigment
If someones a 7 wanting a 9/0 you will have to use blue in your 9 shade.
Am i on the right track, Only went into this on a recent hair course never trained like this when i trained ,many moons ago,lol.:Love:
 
Am i right in thinking when you are lifting hair colour, you are looking at the natural pigment eg client is a base 5 wanting a 7/0 . So you look at 5 having red/orange pigment not looking at the 7 underlying pigment??
So if someones a base 5 you will have to counteract the red no matter how light you lift them.
If someones a base 8 wanting a 12/0 you will have to counteract the yellow from the base 8 underlying pigment
If someones a 7 wanting a 9/0 you will have to use blue in your 9 shade.
Am i on the right track, Only went into this on a recent hair course never trained like this when i trained ,many moons ago,lol.:Love:

Also green is /1 ash in my colour range (Kadus which is like wella)but everyone keeps saying use /0 for green, i thought natural/neutral was a mix of red, blue ,yellow the same as our natural hair??
 
Am i right in thinking when you are lifting hair colour, you are looking at the natural pigment eg client is a base 5 wanting a 7/0 . So you look at 5 having red/orange pigment not looking at the 7 underlying pigment??
So if someones a base 5 you will have to counteract the red no matter how light you lift them.
If someones a base 8 wanting a 12/0 you will have to counteract the yellow from the base 8 underlying pigment
If someones a 7 wanting a 9/0 you will have to use blue in your 9 shade.
Am i on the right track, Only went into this on a recent hair course never trained like this when i trained ,many moons ago,lol.:Love:





Yes your on the right tracks.
The following is a guide to pigment undertones in natural hair.

level 1 has black/red undertones

level 3 has brown/red undertones

level 4 has red/orange undertones.

level 5 has orange/red undertones.

level 6 has orange/gold undertones.

level 7 has gold/orange undertones.

level 8 has gold/yellow undertones.

level 9 has yellow undertones.

level 9 to level 10 has pale yellow/very pale yellow undertones.


From this you can see that if you wanted to lighten say a level 7 to a level 9 you can choose your level 9 tint with the appropriate tone to neutralize unwanted gold/orange undertones.
As you already know, each color house has slightly different numbers for their neutralizing tones.

ie. Loreal uses -1 for ash/blue and -2 for violet/iridescent.

Schwarzkopf uses -2 for ash/blue and -1 for soft violet/cendre.
 
This is what i thought, until i've seen in The colour book how they explain it. It says base 5 lightened to a 7 The result will be blonde with a yellow/orange undertone.( which is the level 7 undertone) thought it would be red????
client base 5 going to a 3 results in a yellow/orange undertone, this is because she has become artificially two shades darker but her natural undertones has lightened slightly.
base 6 to 9 resulting in a pale yellow undertone??
It saying as if you look at the level there going to and that undertone .
Talk about confusing.
 
This is what i thought, until i've seen in The colour book how they explain it. It says base 5 lightened to a 7 The result will be blonde with a yellow/orange undertone.( which is the level 7 undertone) thought it would be red????
client base 5 going to a 3 results in a yellow/orange undertone, this is because she has become artificially two shades darker but her natural undertones has lightened slightly.
base 6 to 9 resulting in a pale yellow undertone??
It saying as if you look at the level there going to and that undertone .
Talk about confusing.




yes its confusing sometimes.

Just think that the darker the natural hair color the more red it will contain and the blonder the natural hair color will contain more yellow and less red. Anything in between say level 5 to 7 will have more copper undertones.
 
Also green is /1 ash in my colour range (Kadus which is like wella)but everyone keeps saying use /0 for green, i thought natural/neutral was a mix of red, blue ,yellow the same as our natural hair??

I spoke to wella regarding the base colors containing green and they said that it's a mixture has you've quoted above!!

So when it came up on here that the base colour would counteract the red in the shades intermixed this was incorrect! The base shade will just tone it down, which this is what I thought it did.

I'm not saying there isnt green to the other brands but in this case it is not present in Wella.

. Hope what ive write make sense lol!! B
 
I spoke to wella regarding the base colors containing green and they said that it's a mixture has you've quoted above!!

So when it came up on here that the base colour would counteract the red in the shades intermixed this was incorrect! The base shade will just tone it down, which this is what I thought it did.

I'm not saying there isnt green to the other brands but in this case it is not present in Wella.

. Hope what ive write make sense lol!! B




Yes your right.
/2 is green/matt in wella.

They don't seem to have any shades that contain /2 except the special mix tones.
 
I spoke to wella regarding the base colors containing green and they said that it's a mixture has you've quoted above!!

So when it came up on here that the base colour would counteract the red in the shades intermixed this was incorrect! The base shade will just tone it down, which this is what I thought it did.

I'm not saying there isnt green to the other brands but in this case it is not present in Wella.

. Hope what ive write make sense lol!! B
oh many many thanks, I kept thinking maybe i'd got it wrong, couldnt understand people saying use natural/neutral to neutralise red. What are your views on underlying pigment?? xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:Love:
 
If anyone can check that it's the starting natural level pigment where looking at not the level we have lifted to (remaining pigment)
eg base 5 to 9
we are considering the red pigment when colouring not the yellow pigment left in the 9.
so we would be using green in our mix when lightening
not the violet to neutralise the yellow,like the official colour book for NVQ level 2 & 3 says. So much conflicting info in hairdressing:sad:
 
Ok, let me get this straight in my head before I go and ask someone who's a teacher in hair!!
So what your saying is you have a client who's a base 5 wishes to go to 9.
So you are wanting to know are you counteracting the tones which r present in the base 5 or the lifted level 9!!
 
Ok, let me get this straight in my head before I go and ask someone who's a teacher in hair!!
So what your saying is you have a client who's a base 5 wishes to go to 9.
So you are wanting to know are you counteracting the tones which r present in the base 5 or the lifted level 9!!

yes.xxx
 
From wella!! You look at the underlying tones which you start with ie in this case base 5.
 
From wella!! You look at the underlying tones which you start with ie in this case base 5.

Thanks so much, so it would be the red in the base 5 that i would have to neutralise when lightening.Thats great. I use Kadus and have a rep but he's not a hairdresser and cant answer any colouring questions.That's the problem with not being with a big company. But i've been told proctor and gamble are taking them over and think they own wella so might get better support.thanks for your help, so kind of you.xxx:Love:
 
Yes red/orange so Green/blue to neutralise . I'm still learning new things every day and helping others also helps me!!! B
 
Thanks, it doesnt help aswell when different underlying pigments alter with who you train with some have 5/0 at a red undertone some say red/orange,some say base 5 is orange. lol it's enough to turn you mad.xx:Love:
 
one tip i once got from a course from a fab colorist was .. she never looked at the color of hair as such she always viewed it as being the relevent undertone (red , orange etc.. ) she said it helped her get into her head the info needed to either accent or neutralise the tones x
 
If you were lifting from a 5 to a 9, it would be the gold in the 9 you had to counter. There would be no red present in a level 9. If you put a green tone on, you would have jungle blonde.

It is the underlying tone in the lightened colour you counter, not the starting colour. That is assuming of course that you lift it sufficiently.
 
If you were lifting from a 5 to a 9, it would be the gold in the 9 you had to counter. There would be no red present in a level 9. If you put a green tone on, you would have jungle blonde.

It is the underlying tone in the lightened colour you counter, not the starting colour. That is assuming of course that you lift it sufficiently.

Now i'm really confused, spent the day looking into this and everyone says you have to look at the natural underlying pigments in the clients base colour so you know what to neutralise.Except the colour book that says look at the target colour pigment left.
eg base 5 -9
I would of used 9/1 (green ash) to colour it
but colour book saying it's the yellow that will shine through,so that's the 9 underlying pigments there referring too.
One of the geeks even asked their hairdressing trainer and they said you would be considering the red/orange pigment from the base 5, when mixing the colour.Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh:sad:
 
Now i'm really confused, spent the day looking into this and everyone says you have to look at the natural underlying pigments in the clients base colour so you know what to neutralise.Except the colour book that says look at the target colour pigment left.
eg base 5 -9
I would of used 9/1 (green ash) to colour it
but colour book saying it's the yellow that will shine through,so that's the 9 underlying pigments there referring too.
One of the geeks even asked their hairdressing trainer and they said you would be considering the red/orange pigment from the base 5, when mixing the colour.Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh:sad:

I would say, but not 100% sure...

When lifting using a tint/highlift or highlighting system such as spectrum (affinage) graphics (matrix), you would counter the undertone of the original base.

When toning after lifting with prelightener, you would counter the tone of the base you have lifted to.

I think this is why you're getting 2 different answers as there are 2 different scenarios...could be wrong but this is how I work :)
 
The colour book, and me, are correct. I promise.

Think about it. Blue is present in black hair, if you bleached it, would that blue be present? No.
If you bleached base 5, would it be red? No, it would be yellow. You would counter the yellow with a violet ash. Green ash over yellow would be nappy khaki.

As long as you create the right amount of lift, you counter the undertone at the level that you reach, not the level you started with.

Eg, if you lifted base 3 to base 5, you would need to counter red as a base 5 would show red undertone.
Base 9 could never hold red. At worst it would throw out a strong gold.
 

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