Here's how to make your hair color last
You’ve put in your time in the hair care aisle of your local drugstore, examining the product options, deliberating over the endless colors and shades, and reading the package directions on the best at home hair hair color kits. You made your informed choice, followed directions and safety tips, and emerged from your towel turban to shake out your luxurious locks of perfectly colored hair. It truly is now your crowning glory and you’ve never been happier with your hair. In fact, you are in love with it, and it’s a relationship that you really want to last. Nothing is more disappointing than falling in love with your new hair color only to find it leaving you… fading away long before you were ready to let it go.
So what are some tips to make this important new relationship last? How do you hang on to your hair color?
Three Day Hair Color Honeymoon Period
In order for hair color to work, it has to penetrate through the hair’s protective cuticle layer—which has no color at all—and into the hair shaft, where the natural pigments are. This means that the best at home hair color is formulated to temporarily lift the scale-like protective shields of the cuticle in order to change the color of the hair shaft beneath.
According to haircare experts, it can take up to three days for the cuticle to fully close, so if you wash your hair before that period, you may be washing away a great deal of the hair color before the cuticle closes to seal it in.
When you do shampoo, be sure to use a color-safe shampoo and conditioner, most of which are sulfate-free, which helps to maintain your hair color longer.
Mask Maintenance To Keep Your Best At Home Hair Color Looking Salon-Perfect
After coloring your hair, it’s more important than ever to treat your hair to a weekly nourishing and moisturizing hair mask. Because the lifting of the hair cuticle that’s required to color your hair shaft causes some damage in the process, a restorative hair mask is more important than ever. This will help to heal and repair the damage that hair color causes and will allow your best at home hair color effort to look as glossy and healthy as though you’d just stepped out of an expensive salon.
Turn Down the Heat
To help extend the life of your hair color, wash your hair in warm water—not hot. Just as in laundry, hot water will fade out dye much faster than warm or cool.
After your warm shampoo and conditioning, be sure to rinse in cool water. The warm water will let your shampoo and conditioner clean and moisturize your hair, and the cool rinse helps to seal moisture into your hair so you get the most out of your conditioner.
Shun the Shampoo
Even the best at home hair color will fade eventually if you are using a red dye, or a hair color that’s darker than your natural hair. In order to keep your color vivid as long as possible, shampoo as infrequently as you can get away with and still be clean and hygienic. Hair care experts recommend shampooing only three times a week, or no more than every other day. Natural hair oils protect your colored hair and keep it vibrant. Over-washing strips those protective oils from your hair and causes faster fading.
Use a sulfate-free dry shampoo between shampoos, in order to keep your hair fresh.
Adopt a Hat Habit
UV rays are not only damaging to skin, they also damage your hair by allowing the development of free radical cells which compromise your hair’s structural integrity and leads to breakage. This is even more likely with colored hair which is already compromised. UV ray exposure will cause your hair color to fade much more quickly. Protect your terrific tresses with a cute floppy hat, and your hair will thank you for it.
Quit the Chlorine
Chlorine can cause the color to be stripped from your hair, and damages it by removing essential protective oils. It’s especially important to avoid exposure to chlorine pools if you’ve chosen a blonde hair color shade. Even the best at home hair color may turn green-tinged if the hair is over-exposed to chlorine.
With these hair color helping tips, you and your favorite hair color will enjoy a long-lasting relationship, and may even live happily ever after...or at least until you are ready to try another.
Resources— TheEveryGirl.com, Matrix, LuxyHair.com
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