FIVE TIPS FOR LONGER-LASTING COLOUR
Things that don’t last long: your new fitness regime; your resolution to kick your Asos habit; bottles of wine, once opened; packets of chocolate digestives in the HOB office.
Thankfully, your new hair colour, which looks luscious when you leave the salon but can fade like a wilting New Years resolution if you don’t care for it, doesn’t have to join this line-up.
Just follow our 5 tips below and your colour (and your colourist) will applaud you…
1. Decent haircare before the appointment
Hard to believe, but your choice of shampoo & conditioner is just as important before your colour appointment as what you use afterwards. Cheaper high street brands contain a high level of silicone (essentially plastic) which coats the hair strand to make it look falsely shiny. This then acts as a barrier to your hair colour, not allowing it to penetrate the shaft properly, and means that the colour will simply slide off in a matter of weeks. Invest in professional shampoo & conditioner from the salon at least 8 weeks beforehand to ensure your colour has proper staying power.
2. ….. And Afterwards!
Yes, you saw this one coming. After your appointment, it’s the sulphates that are leading the army of nasties, (which again are found in high ratios in high street products) stripping away the colour and a few other good things (like moisture) that your hair would much rather hold on to. Buy decent products. We’ll say it again. Buy decent products. Amen.
3. Ask for Anti-Oxidant Conditioner
We won’t bore you with the science here, but when your hair’s being coloured, there’s all sorts of magical things going on inside the hair shaft. You want to keep all that stuff on the inside in order to maximise your colour lifespan, and an ‘anti-oxidant conditioner’ used at the salon basin as part of the post-colour washing process will close down the oxidisation process and return your hair to it’s natural PH level - which basically means that none of your lovely toner is allowed to escape prematurely.
4. Use Protection
A great piece of advice when applied to many of life’s joys (….we were thinking of sunbathing, actually) and which also applies when frying your poor hair with hairdryers and hot tools. Heat damage leads to higher porosity, cuticle erosion and damage to the inner cortex, all of which spell F.A.D.E for your hair colour. Get some heat protection spray in your kit pronto and promise us you won’t style without it.
5. Top Up Your Tone
Sometimes, we all need a little pep-up. Your hair colour will repay you with love and renewed vibrancy if you treat it to a little in-between booster appointment. Most salons (including HOB) will offer an inexpensive top-up service, whether you need a root touch, a few foils or a toner to refresh the shade. At HOB Salons, all of our colour refresh packages include a blowdry: choose from Tone & Go for £40, Rapid Roots for £45 or Instalights for £50. You can also buy homecare products, such as Wella Colour Fresh or Wella Invigo, that contain colour pigments and are simply applied in the shower and rinsed off, so there’s no excuse for not keeping things fresh.
One more thing…. If you’re in the market for new haircare products and want the type of colour-protecting, professional shampoo & conditioner we’re on about in (1) and (2), we’ve got the answer. Wella Colour Motion and Wella System Professional Colour Save are currently on offer at HOB Salons - get both the shampoo and conditioner for £24.50 and £34.95 respectively, saving up to £11 compared to their normal price. Voila! Longer-lasting colour at incredible value.