Lowlights and dealing with heavily highlighted hair which is blonde with dark roots

[lush224]

Any good colourist out there please help! What would you do with with this hair if the client asked you for advice

The client has naturally darkish shoulder length brown hair, they have been having bleach highlights regularly put through for some time. Their hair is now very blonde and the roots are coming through very noticeable. The last time they had highlights they were disappointed with the result as the roots still looked quite bad and the remainder of the hair ended up looking even blonder.

They do not want to have a whole colour and have been mentioning lowlights perhaps some a darker brown and some a lighter brown or maybe even those two colours with a third blonde so there is a highlight in there too? What does everyone think would be the best way forward with this hair?

 

[minky]

Hi I think I would just break it up a bit with some warm golden brown foils ,
don't go any lower in base than 6/3 or 7/3 as you could get grab on the ends,


you could still put some bleach highlights in it on the roots only,
but try not to overlap where the other bleach is or it could snap off .

This lady's hair sounds like it may be out of condition ,
and could very well be a colour correction job , so always do test pieces first ,

If it is way out of your depth tell her that you don't do colour correction ,
but the local college usually do it ,

If you decide to go ahead keep it as simple as possible ,

Also tell her it will take more than one go, as colour fades on blonde hair ,
and dont make her any promises :hug: good luck x


.

 

[Jeni Giles]

Hi I think I would just break it up a bit with some warm golden brown foils ,
don't go any lower in base than 6/3 or 7/3 as you could get grab on the ends,


you could still put some bleach highlights in it on the roots only,
but try not to overlap where the other bleach is or it could snap off .

This lady's hair sounds like it may be out of condition ,
and could very well be a colour correction job , so always do test pieces first ,

If it is way out of your depth tell her that you don't do colour correction ,
but the local college usually do it ,

If you decide to go ahead keep it as simple as possible ,

Also tell her it will take more than one go, as colour fades on blonde hair ,
and dont make her any promises :hug: good luck x


.

You ROCK!!!:hug:

 

[minky]

You ROCK!!!:hug:

Hi , Jeni Giles , awww :o shucks well that is such a fab compliment coming from you , thank you :hug: x

.

 

[Scu8a8uddy]

Hi Minky. This is my first posting here so please be kind to my misakes!!
This happens ALL the time. A client keeps having hilites and over time the ends are a full head bleach, the midlengths ar 75% bleach and the roots look terrible. Even after having hilites they don't really notice because to match the ends you might as well have a full head bleach to get them the same. You need to convince your client that they need to combine the bleach hilites with a colour close to their natural and that this will then take them back to the first time they had them done when they had a ice combination of dark and light tones in their hair. Depending on their response you could either combine the bleach and darker colour in alternate foils or introduce them gradually to the idea by placing one dark to two bleach foils. This will give their hair colout a depth that it currently lacks. Go careful though, as Jenny says, with the darker colour you may need to put a differnet colour on the bleached parts to that you put on the roots (natural hair). Remember that the bleached ends carry no warmth in them so don't use an ash as it will go a little green looking. I would suggest for an ash look to use ash on the roots and a natural on the ends (or even something with a little warmth in it). For a warmer look (which is always safer if you're unsure) use something with a bit of gold in it. Its difficult to say what level you need to drop down to because each client is different. Obviously on the ends dont use anything stronger than 3% (10 vol) peroxide. If the hair is in very poor condition you may even need to prefill the bleached ends before colouring. Really you're talking about colour correction which is a complex matter and shouldn't be attempted without a bit of experience. I hope this isn't information overload.

 

[paulette]

My stylist & me have the same going on with my hair she used a colour touch using a low peroxide with a brown to break up the blonde although it has faded a bit now 3 weeks on and im happy about that ! Although she used quite a dark colour and IMO I thought initially the dark colour used was too dark (and I did post to ask for a bit of help as I panicked a bit as it looked too dark) but I do totally agree with Minky NO lower than a 6.

 

[minky]

My stylist & me have the same going on with my hair she used a colour touch using a low peroxide with a brown to break up the blonde although it has faded a bit now 3 weeks on and im happy about that ! Although she used quite a dark colour and IMO I thought initially the dark colour used was too dark (and I did post to ask for a bit of help as I panicked a bit as it looked too dark) but I do totally agree with Minky NO lower than a 6.

Hi Paulette,
I am so glad to hear that your colour has faded a bit now :hug: x


Lush ,
I always tend to stick to warm golden browns in base sixes and sevens
for foiling between highlights
as it can so easily grab and go very dark or an awful ashy khaki tone at the ends of the highlights ,


.

 

[annari86]

Hi Everyone,

I actually went to a Paul Mitchell hair school to get my hair done. My hair was blonde (after many highlights) and I was thinking of going back to a nice deep dark chestnut brown. Well the girl talked me out of it and recommend getting alot of lowlights. I showed her a picture of Natalie Portman (she had warm brown hair with small honey caramel pieces) and the girl and her teacher said yeah thats how it would look like. Well fast fwd, they put in a really dark brown, no , warmth in it, it looks like a dark, dull mossy color, and against the blond pieces in my hair, it looks horrible! I look like I have fake hair, like kinda grayish,green mossy looking color. The teacher was like it looks great! do you like it?! I was like its okay... I didn't want the girl to feel bad and I just didn't know what to do, after seeing mess on my hair.

I went to a professional place, and they messed it up. I don't want to go back there, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Is there anything I can do at home? Maybe buy a box of golden chestnut brown and color it all over? will that work?

I just want to color my hair so that it looks normal, alive and not some greenish matte color it is now.

any tips, recommendations and advice is appreciated!

 

[Caszz]

I work with Wella. For low-lights I use these a lot:
9/7 with pastel 1:2 gives a light caramel
9/73 with pastel 1:2 sandy blonde
Of you want to go darker:
77/07 color touch with 4%
I always do slices with lowlights of you maze them, they look less nice