If you’re a blonde like me, no doubt you’ve experienced the strange phenomenon that plagues the unnatural blonde. A week or so after having your hair coloured…the shade you left the salon with is no more, and now your hair has taken on an undesirable yellow, orange or even reddish tone. That’s right, you’ve got brassy hair.
Brassiness, or unwanted warm tones, typically happens in dark hair that is coloured platinum or blonde, but it can also strike hair that has been highlighted or hair that has been lightened to brown.
Not to get too technical here, but to understand why this keeps happening, you’ll need to understand a bit about the hair lightening process. Brassy tones become a problem when bleaching or lifting doesn’t get rid of all the underlying pigment in your hair, giving the warm tones an opportunity to reveal themselves. For lightened blonde hair, the underlying pigment is yellow, and for lightened brown to black hair, the underlying pigments are orange to red. When the brassiness starts to rear its head, just think of it as your natural hair saying, “Hi, remember me?”.
Don’t stress though. There are many options when it comes to dealing with brassy tones, both preventing it and fixing it after it happens.
The first step towards avoiding brassy tones is to ensure your hair is in tip top condition. Since healthy hair is less likely to turn brassy, add in a bond-protecting service, like L’Oreal Professional’s Smartbond, during the bleaching or colouring process, to protect your hair from damage while colouring and strengthen your strands. Follow this up with nourishing treatments at home, such as Redken All Soft Megamask 200ml. Use this once a week, leaving it on for at least 10 minutes to give your hair a treat and restore hair health.
Need an at-home quick fix? If you’re a blonde, you’ll need to go for a purple shampoo like such as L’Oreal Professional Silver Shampoo 300ml. Replace your usual shampoo once or twice a week with this baby. Once you’ve lathered up and distributed through your hair, leave for two minutes and then rinse thoroughly. If you’ve had your hair lightened to brown, try a blue-tinted shampoo or conditioner such as L’Oreal Professional Serie Expert Color Corrector 150ml.
You need to avoid overuse with these products though, so make sure you only use these products once or twice a week. The rest of the time use a colour protecting shampoo, such as Redken Colour Extend Magnetics to help reduce colour fade.
With Summer holiday season fast approaching, you’ll need to be wary of the sun and chilling by the pool. Chlorine from swimming pools can strip your hair dry, leaving your hair dull and damage-prone. And when hair becomes damaged, your colour will have a harder time staying in place, meaning more opportunities for brassy tones to appear. Make sure you protect your hair before you hit the pool by wetting it down first. Your hair is like a sponge, once it’s saturated with water it will be unable to absorb too much of the chlorinated water once you dive in. Sun exposure can also affect your colour by causing it to fade faster and making brassiness more visible. Keep your hair protected by spraying in L’Oreal Professional Solar Sublime Conditioning Spray 125ml. This light, leave-in mist provides instant conditioning protection for hair during sun exposure, shielding it from drying effects, while leaving it super shiny.
There’s a reason why blonde is deemed the most ‘high maintenance’ of all hair colours…
How do you control your hair’s brassy tones?
xoxo
1. Time to book that haircut. It’s essential after enjoying the summer sun that you book into the salon to give your hair a new lease of life and remove those damaged ends. Even if you’ve been really protective of your hair, I always recommend to my clients that they have a good trim in order to keep their hair looking and feeling healthy. If you’re seeing lots of split ends, ask your stylist for a cut with minimal layers and a strong baseline to eradicate that shattered end feel and build as much weight into the hair as possible.
