Brown Ombre | Behind the Instagram

This hair color is one of those that are very difficult. My client came in with black box color in her hair. She has been putting this black color on her hair for a few years. 

Black box color is one of the worst colors to put in your hair. Box color in general is made as a "one size fits all" when it comes to hair texture and color, so these chemicals are the strongest and most damaging to the hair. You would never know it since when you finish the at-home color, it looks "healthy" and "shiny." But this is an illusion, and getting rid of box color is not as easy as some may think.

As you can see in the picture below, the client had very long black hair. She has thin hair texture and she didn't want a drastic haircut, just a small trim.

To lighten her hair I mixed up my Matrix lightener with 20 volume developer. I wanted to use a very low developer because since her hair had so much black color on it, I didn't want to damage the hair more than it needed it. And since our goal color was a medium brown I didn't need to lighten the hair too far. We mainly just wanted to remove as much of that black color as we could. 

We let the lightener process for 45 minutes, and I made sure to keep an eye on the hair as it processed.

After washing out the lightener, I quickly rough dried her hair with my blow dryer and we went in to tone the hair.

With just the bleach the hair had lightened very unevenly and spotty. Some spots where still pretty dark and others were an orange tone.
She was going for a black to brown ombre, so we went in with Matrix 6A and 10 volume developer as the toner. I used 6A because we were going for a light/medium brown and we also were trying to cancel out as much of that unwanted orange tone with the ash. 

I let the color process for the full 35 minutes to make sure we got as much color pay off as possible.

The last few steps were to give her a quick trim and a quick blowout.

The blend between the black and the brown was very soft and pretty, I really enjoyed doing this color. It was a challenge and it took a few hours, but in the end it turned out like what the client wanted. 

|| YOUTUBE CHANNELS ||

Beauty Channel: https://www.youtube.com/thesoriameffect4
Spanish Beauty Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5erjTu3sPPV7pGKjOP8w
Vlog Channel: http://YouTube.com/SoriamTV


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Caramel Balayage | Behind the Instagram

I have been doing more hair coloring recently, and I thought that it would be fun to talk a little about the pictures I post to Instagram and tell you what I did and what I could possibly do better. 

This post is the first one in my Behind the Instagram series. I will be doing this for some of my favorite Instagram pictures.

During the consultation for this color she told me that she wanted to have a caramely blonde balayage that would transition into an ombre at the ends. She also wanted a haircut to match her new color.

This client came in with virgin hair at a natural level 3(warm) and the length was about to the middle of her back. Before I did the color I dry cut about 5 inches off the length. This is a great way to make sure you are not wasting color/lightener. If I would have done the color first and then the cut, I would have probably cut off all her ombre ends. 

A good tip when getting to know what the guest wants is to make sure you know exactly everything she wants and you can even suggest things that maybe the guest might not have thought of. Make sure to cover all the bases before starting any service. This will make it very easy to know what to do and when.

Once I had the base of the cut done, then I went in with the lightener. When it comes to a balayage or ombre, the key is to make the light and dark colors blend seamlessly together. 

I always try to work off of the clients natural color as much as possible. This sort of color can work wonders for people that don't have the time or desire to be at the salon getting their re-growth touched up every 4 weeks.

Unlike traditional highlights, balayage highlights don't go the whole way up to the scalp. This gives it a very soft natural look to the color, and makes it grow out beautifully. 

Since this client has a smaller head, and about medium to fine hair I was able to take inch and a half sections. starting from the back nape of her head and working my way up.

I sectioned off a mohawk section from her forehead to her crown. The rest of the hair I section in a regular T part. 

The trick to blending the highlights into an ombre is to grip the hair as tight as possible, then add the most lightener to the midshaft of the hair in a V or W shape, very carefully blending the lightener up the hair shaft up to where you want the highlights to start. Then making sure that the ends are completely saturated. I like to keep the lightener only on the surface of the section that I am working on, only saturating the ends of the hair. This will make the blend between the natural color and the lightened color seamless.

After the lightener was applied, I watched it process to make sure it gets to the color I want it to be.

Once it was done, I washed and conditioned her hair then finished her haircut by giving her long layers to compliment the color. 

Since this client had virgin hair, I didn't have to tone the color to get to the desired shade. 

Overall, I really liked how this color turned out. The blend between the lighter color and her natural color is completely seamless. 

|| YOUTUBE CHANNELS ||

Beauty Channel: https://www.youtube.com/thesoriameffect4
Spanish Beauty Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5erjTu3sPPV7pGKjOP8w
Vlog Channel: http://YouTube.com/SoriamTV


|| FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA ||

Instagram: https://instagram.com/the_soriam_effect/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/thesoriameffect
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SorrriamArrrce
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/soriamarce/
Tumblr: http://sosoriam.tumblr.com