Hair Color

Hair coloring or lightening is the practice of changing the color of hair. During lightening, hair goes through various stages until it reaches the ideal orange/gold color. Lightening time varies, depending on natural hair color. The darker the hair, the longer the lightening time needed. Medium brown hair on average takes somewhere around 40 minutes to lighten. Dark brown hair takes somewhere around fifty minutes to lighten. Darkest brown hair takes around sixty minutes to lighten. And black hair takes around sixty minutes to lighten. That is just on average and can vary a bit depending on the person s hair. Common reasons for coloring or lightening are to cover gray hair, to change to a color to be regarded as more fashionable or desirable, and to restore the original hair color after it has been discolored by hairdressing processes or sun bleaching. Hair coloring is one of the potential and lucrative ways in which a salon can make money. Most of the clients of a hair salon at some point and time will want to enhance or change their hair color. Hair coloring is both a science and an art and for a hair stylist to become or be considered as an expert, they should be able to perform the following services of enhancing the hair, blending or covering gray, lightening natural hair color, depositing color on previously colored hair, depositing color on hair that has been lightened and creating dimensional color. Hair color was traditionally applied to the hair as one overall color. The modern trend is to use several colors to produce streaks or gradations, either on top of the natural color or on top of a single base color. These are referred to as:
• Highlighting, where sections of hair are treated with lighteners, usually to create blond streaks.
• Low lighting, where sections of hair are treated with darker hair color.
These can be applied by the following methods:
• Foiling, where pieces of foil or plastic film are used to separate off the hair to be