Shannon

Thinking of coloring your own hair?
Box Hair Color:  The ugly truth

I’ve dealt with many a client that has experimented with box color.  And one thing never changes in my experience; the desired result is never accomplished.   Ladies, please stop coloring your own hair! I don’t care how desperate you may be to save some money on going to a salon to pay a professional to color your hair.  DO NOT USE BOX HAIR COLOR.  It will cause permanent damage to your hair.  You are taking a huge risk by attempting to color your hair on your own just to save a few bucks.

So you’re walking through Target and you see a box of hair color with the beautiful model and the beautiful hair.  You think to yourself, “Wow, my hair could look like this?”  The answer is no, plain and simple.  Right now there is an epidemic of consumers with home hair color mishaps.  This is why I think this article is so important if you’re thinking of taking that short cut and picking up that box of color.   If you ask any hair stylist about what goes wrong when coloring your own hair with box color, they will tell you it has to do with these 3 factors.

Problem #1: Condition of the Hair Prior to Coloring

If your hair is not in the best condition to begin with, do not reach for that box color!  Putting a chemical on top of hair that is already damaged will not fix the problem, it will make it worse.  This is yet another reason why you go to a professional for this service.  A licensed stylist can look at your hair and tell you if it’s even strong enough for a color process.  Remember box hair color is even harsher than the hair color we use in hair salons.  The reason for this is that they want a fast easy result.  And any licensed stylist knows, the faster the process the harsher the chemical.  Keep that in mind.

Problem #2: Color on Top of Color

This is probably the worse offense I’ve seen in all my years of doing hair.  Any licensed stylist knows that color won’t lift color.  Meaning if you have already put color in your hair, say a dark brown to cover some of that grey, you CANNOT go behind that with a lighter shade of box color thinking that color can be achieved!  It’s virtually impossible!  If color has been deposited onto the strand already, it is impossible to lift and tone to a lighter shade without using a harsh De-colorization method like BLEACH first.

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Problem #3: Understanding How to Achieve the Desired Level

Shannon

If your hair is a natural level 3 to begin with, and you want to lift it to a level 9, like the model on the box color, you will not be able to do that with a box color.  Reason being the hair will only typically lift 3 to 4 levels.  Trying to do this on your own is not only EXTREMELY damaging, you won’t get the desired result.  Even worse is that now you have to pay a stylist even more money to fix the disaster you’ve created!

And this is not a normal color service after you’ve used this box color, it’s a corrective color, which will cost you sometimes double than what you would have paid if you had just gone to a salon in the first place!  Now I know I probably confused you with all this talk about natural and desired levels of hair color, but I did that to make a point.  We are the professionals when it comes to hair color, not you, that’s what you pay us for.  Let us do our jobs.  I guarantee, you will get the color you want.

If you’ve had a home hair color mishap and would like to ask me any questions, I may be able to help.  Let me, know I would love to hear from you.  We’ll l talk again soon.