Hair coloring: how to dye your hair with paint at home, dyeing technology
The technique of hair coloring is not so complicated as to entrust this procedure exclusively to hairdressers. Yes, and professional hair coloring products are now sold in any cosmetic store: so, armed with paint and the appropriate tools, you can safely get down to business.
What is hair coloring and how to dye your hair correctly, you will learn on this page.
What is hair coloring at home
Hair coloring is one of the oldest cosmetic procedures, which was used with equal success by both men and women. In ancient Persia, for example, men dyed their beards with henna – it was considered beautiful. However, we will not delve into history.
Doing hair coloring is the fastest way to transform yourself. Every woman wants to be attractive, and hair coloring in this sense can work wonders, making you either romantic and tender, or bold and daring, or confident and strict – it all depends on what hair color you choose for yourself.
Hair coloring used to be done exclusively in hairdressing salons. However, now hair coloring at home, thanks to a large number of different coloring products, is available to anyone.
Dye for home hair coloring
Before you dye your hair, decide which paint is preferable for you. Hair dye at home can be natural and artificial (chemical). Which one is preferable? It all depends on your taste, on the structure of the hair and on the end result you are striving for.
Natural and chemical dyes have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is known that a natural dye has a more gentle effect on the hair than a chemical one, but the coloring is not very resistant.
Dyeing hair with a chemical agent is more resistant and saturated, but often such a dye acts aggressively on the hair, as a result of which it is damaged. If you decide – "we dye our hair at home with a chemical composition" – you will have to remember that beauty requires sacrifice and once again weigh the pros and cons, especially since different products give different degrees of intensity of hair coloring. Sometimes, in order to change your appearance and remain satisfied with the result, it is enough to use some remedy that is “softer" in effect than hair dye, especially since there are many options.
Hair coloring products: dye and shampoo
Hair coloring products are selected depending on how rich the color you need.
Hair dye (colorator) is a tool that gives the strongest effect. The impact of such hair dye is extremely intense: you can radically change your appearance. The fact is that the oxidizing agents contained in hair dye are able to break down natural pigments, thereby making room for a chemical dye. It is with the help of such a tool that a bright blonde can become a burning brunette, and a brown-haired woman can give her hair the color of an eggplant or pomegranate. The positive side of using hair dye is the intensity and durability of the color, the ability to radically change the color of the hair, the negative side is the active effect on the hair structure, which can lead to damage. After intensive hair coloring, even if the coloring did not cause visible damage,
Coloring high-quality shampoo – a tool that gives a short-term effect. These shampoos contain paint (or, rather, pigment), which “settles” on the hair and lasts until the next shampoo. You may not have to flaunt your new color for a long time, but you have a good chance of changing your image often. It should be said that coloring with a special shampoo cannot be called intense, but if you want to make your natural hair color more expressive, giving it the desired shade, you won't find a better remedy. Since the coloring shampoo does not contain components that aggressively affect the hair and allow the pigment to penetrate deep into their structure, you can not be afraid of damaging your hair.
Professional hair coloring products: tinting
Washable toning is in many ways akin to a coloring shampoo: it contains a pigment that settles on the hair without penetrating deep into their structure. However, this pigment is more resistant: it stays on the hair for a relatively long time, finally being removed only after you wash your hair 5-7 times. The advantage of such tinting is in its gentle effect on the hair and in the intensity of the color, the disadvantage is in its gradual washing off from the hair.
Another remedy for hair coloring, however, with a short-term effect is intense tinting. Unlike washable, intensive tinting contains an oxidizing agent, which promotes the penetration of the pigment into the hair structure. However, this tool can still be called sparing. It is washed off the hair for two months. I would especially like to mention the so-called on-off tinting, hair coloring products, which, if desired, are washed off without a trace with a special composition when you want it. A feature of the use of intensive tinting is that the hair should not be dyed or bleached before using it.
Hair coloring tools: bowl, gloves, cape
What needs to be prepared before you start staining? As eager as you are to begin the process of transformation, remember that it is impossible without some necessary things.
One of the necessary tools for dyeing hair is a regular bowl (preferably plastic) in which you will dilute the dye. You can’t do without this container, since many modern colorators include not only a dye, but also a fixing emulsion. So that the reaction between these two components does not occur before you start coloring, you need to mix them immediately before coloring.
Stock up on a pair of gloves: you need to dye your hair, not your hands.
A cape made of oilcloth, polyethylene or waterproof fabric will help you prevent paint from getting on your clothes.
Hair coloring tools: comb, cap
Another essential tool for hair coloring is a comb, with which you will evenly distribute the dye through the hair. A wide-toothed comb is preferable: you will have to spread the dye through wet hair, and a wide-toothed comb is more difficult to do. For the same purpose – the distribution of paint – you can use a special brush.
A sheet of foil or an oilcloth cap will be especially useful if you want to achieve the brightest and most intense shade: in this case, the splitting of the pigment occurs under a stronger heat effect, which enhances the chemical reaction. Don't forget your towel, hair balm, hair dryer and skeletal brush: these items will help you finish your hair after coloring.
We dye our hair at home: safety precautions
Remember that hair dye is a chemical compound that can cause an allergic reaction on the skin. In any case, it is necessary to observe safety precautions when coloring hair, and if the scalp is damaged or affected by a skin disease such as psoriasis or eczema, there is no need to take risks at all – hair coloring is not for you yet. But even if your skin seems perfectly healthy, it does not hurt to check it for an allergic reaction, especially since this does not necessarily require an appointment with an allergist. All you need is a small amount of the product you are going to dye your hair with and a little patience. Do not be too lazy to apply the composition to the back of the elbow, after wiping it with alcohol. Repeat this procedure for fidelity three times and leave to dry completely. Now I have to wait two days but exactly after 48 hours you will be able to accurately determine whether the selected composition is suitable for you. If there is no allergic reaction on the skin, you can safely use the paint. If the reaction has made itself felt, you should not use such paint. The appearance of an allergy in you does not mean that the composition itself is bad: we are all different, and what is suitable for some is completely unsuitable for others.
So, everything is ready, there is no allergic reaction, which means you can dye your hair. That's just before you take on the paint, you need to wash your hair, you think. Stop! Another mistake. Coloring is not a haircut. If the haircut turns out to be neater, the cleaner the hair, then the opposite is true with coloring: the procedure will be more gentle if done on unwashed hair. That is, before you properly dye your hair, you should never wash them. Of course, this does not mean at all that before coloring you need to walk with a dirty head for a whole week, dye your hair a day or two after washing your hair – this is what you need.
Hair coloring technique (with video how to dye hair)
Check out the video on how to dye your hair, and feel free to start dyeing:
1 Before dyeing your hair, squeeze the coloring compound from the tube into a bowl. If a fixing emulsion is attached to the composition, mix them. Don't forget to wear gloves. Your end goal is dyed hair, not hands.
2 Using a comb or a special brush, apply the composition to unwashed hair. The correct hair coloring technique dictates that special attention should be paid to the roots: it is in the direction from the roots to the ends of the hair that the colorator should be applied.
3 Leave the dye on your hair for a while. The process of splitting natural pigments can take a different amount of time. It depends both on the composition of the paint and on the type of your hair. On average, the time of exposure to hair dye ranges from 15 to 30 minutes. Check the time according to the instructions that are in each package of paint. If you want a more saturated and lasting color, wrap your head with foil, rolling a kind of cap out of it, or put on an oilcloth cap.
Hair highlighting is a new coloring technology that improves their condition. It is based on the use of the negatively charged dye elumen, which penetrates deep into the positively charged hair. The hair is dyed perfectly and does not deteriorate, but on the contrary, it feeds on useful substances.
4 Rinse thoroughly with warm (not hot!) water.
5 Dry your hair with a towel.
6 Dry and style your hair with a hairdryer and brush.
7 You can admire the result.
How to color your hair at home
From time to time, hair color needs to be updated. Firstly, the effect of the pigment on the hair is not eternal: over time, the color still fades. Secondly, the hair is constantly growing, and soon you run the risk of finding that regrown hair roots that differ in color from the colored areas significantly spoil the overall picture. So re-staining is unavoidable. Since the hair roots differ in color, special attention will have to be paid to them. The composition is applied to the roots for 20 minutes, after which it is distributed along the entire length of the hair with a comb and remains on them for another 10 minutes.
When coloring your hair, remember that this procedure requires some precautions and restrictions. For example, the hair coloring composition should not be used to color eyebrows and eyelashes. Eyebrow correction (a procedure even more subtle than hair coloring) will be done in a beauty salon, and there is mascara for coloring eyelashes. So use hair dye only for its intended purpose.
If the colorator gets into your eyes during coloring, immediately rinse them with plenty of water. Do not hesitate to use water even in cases where the paint has got on the skin of the face, hands or clothes: you are unlikely to want to flaunt mahogany stains where they are not provided for by the laws of fashion.
Black hair is not for all women. Girls with bronze skin can afford to be brunettes, but the “dark-skinned” dark hair color ages. Black hair suits fair skin too. However, black hair is contraindicated for girls with white, porcelain skin.
Hair coloring technology: error correction
Hair coloring technology is a troublesome process, and rarely anyone manages to do without mistakes, especially at first. What to do in cases where the coloring for some reason still does not suit you 100%? Recolor your hair? Yes, of course, everything can be fixed. However, before you work on fixing errors, understand their causes.
1 Hair after dyeing has become too dark in color. This can happen for several reasons. Perhaps you did not pay due attention to the selection of the desired tone and chose too dark, or your hair is too thin and you simply overexposed the paint on them.
2 The resulting color was too light. The only explanation is the wrong choice of composition: apparently, you mistakenly used too light, and next time you will need to use a composition that is one tone darker.
3 After drying and styling, you find that your hair is colored unevenly. There are several explanations for this. The most likely one is that you have used too little of the composition. Meanwhile, there is a clear rule: one tube of paint is enough for short and semi-long hair (length up to or just below the shoulders). For longer hair, you need to take two tubes of colorator. This rule applies at least for the first hair coloring. In the future, if you just want to refresh the color of your choice and restore its brightness, it will be enough to use one tube.
Hair can be colored unevenly for other reasons. If you are a middle-aged woman, then by dyeing your hair, you are trying not only to change your appearance, but also to paint over gray hair. However, it is precisely because of the gray hair that the hair is sometimes not completely dyed, especially if there is a lot of gray hair. The way out is to choose a more intense tone of paint next time.
Sometimes the paint falls on the hair unevenly due to the peculiarities of their structure. The thicker the hair, the more difficult it is to color, unlike fine hair, which is stained quickly. However, there is a way out here. Before dyeing, you can use a clarifier to break down the cells of the natural hair pigment, and only then apply a colorator. You can also choose a more intense tone and, after applying the dye to your hair, hold it longer (but within the time specified in the instructions for use!).
And finally, another reason for uneven coloring is hair styling products. Unwashed hair should be dyed, however, if styling products remain on them, it is still better to wash your hair before dyeing than to do it on top of all sorts of varnishes, mousses or gels: the result can be unpredictable, especially since any styling product is usually, chemical composition, so that a chemical reaction can occur between its components and the components of the colorator. Therefore, either wash off styling products from your hair and color immediately after washing on clean hair, after drying it with a towel, or be patient and wait another two days with coloring, without washing your hair and not using foams, varnishes, gels and other products.
4 The scalp was irritated after coloring. This means that you either have very sensitive or allergy-prone skin. It remains to be added that if a chemical dye does not suit you due to the characteristics of your skin, but you still want to change your hair color, you can use one of the options for gentle hair coloring.