“Brassy” is one of those words that are thrown around in hair conversations all of the time. But is brassy hair that bad? It is if you want a perfectly cool tone in your hair but these days there is a big come back for the golden tones, especially in balayage.
How does your hair become brassy? There are two ways to lighten your hair, one is to use bleach which strips your natural hair pigment out and then you can “tone” the bleached hair with a semi permanent hair colour to achieve the colour you want. The other way is to use a tint to which lightens the hair and adds artificial pigment back in the one process. Tint will only lighten hair that is natural. There are pro’s and con’s with both methods, but that another whole blog!
When you bleach your hair, the hair lightens by stages with different overtones. For example you start with black then it proceeds to red, red orange, orange, yellow and pale yellow. Afterwards you use the colour wheel to choose the appropriate colour to counteract or enhance your result. For instance if you have a yellow result you will use a blonde colour with purple to achieve a cooler result. How ever if you choose an “ash” toner this can be horrific because the base of ash is blue. What happens when you mix blue and yellow? Yes green! This is why you may see some really muddy, dull blondes around. Because their hairdresser or worse, the home colourist doesn’t know the colour wheel. A blue based toner is recommended for a colour that is still in the orange phase of lightning.
When you use a tint to lighten your natural hair, it has a more gentle effect on the condition of your hair, but can only be used to lighten natural hair. Meaning if you have dyed hair and want to lighten it a tint won’t work. It can also only lift your hair a few shades from it’s natural base colour. Tinting is great if you want to lighten your hair slightly and keep a less noticeable regrowth and more condition in your hair. Using tint is perfect if you want a more golden look.
Sometimes people have a combination of both tint and bleach in the hair. This quite often leads to a brassy look. The common scenario is having bleach foils with an all over tint in between. Usually the client has relatively dark hair and wants to be quite light. The bleached foils would leave a heavy regrowth so sometimes they will be advised to have the combination of both foils and all over tint (doing the foils every second colour). After complaining about their hair being too brassy they may choose to use a purple shampoo, conditioner or even toner. The purple pigment will counteract any yellow in the bleach foils turning them white, but won’t be strong enough or be the right shade to counteract the brassy tones in the all over tint. This will make the unwanted tones in the all over tint stand out more.
So what is the answer to getting rid of the brassy tones in your hair? Firstly, if you want the perfect blonde, choose a talented colourist and stick to them, don’t colour your own hair or chop and change salons. Secondly, be prepared to spend the dollars, the perfect blonde requires constant upkeep. Lastly make sure that you are prescribed the right coloured shampoo and conditioner, it’s a fine line between the right blonde tone.
