Salon V Box
Everyone has had someone tell them not to box colour their hair, but why? Is there really a difference between box and salon colour? Here’s a few reasons why we, at The Loft, suggest sticking to a salon.
1) Consultation- the big difference between box and salon colour is the stylist that comes with the salon. Your stylist has been educated on what will be achievable and best for your hair. They will be able to tell you if the health of your hair is up to it, if the tone you want will look good with your skin tone. They will tell you if the colour you want will be high or low maintenance. They will let you know if the colour you’ve chosen will work well based on the activities you do in your life.
2) Tone- When using box colour, the idea is that no matter where you’re starting, your hair will look like 1 of the 3 options on the box. That’s just not realistic. Yes, this will be the case for some people but not for everyone. Based on what darkness and tone your hair is before you box dye will greatly effect what your hair will look like once it’s done.
3) Strength- The product in the box is made so that it will work on the greatest amount of people. This means that even if you only need a mild to medium amount of lifting strength, your hair will receive the maximum amount of lifting, ultimately doing extra damage to your hair. The potential of losing more of your hair cuticle is high, and this means your colour won’t last as long.
4) Browning Out- What browning out means is that you are taking tone out of your colour. When you put colour on top of previously coloured hair, you are replacing the tonal reflect of your colour with brown. This means that if you’re going darker, any warmth or red tone or violet tone etc will continue to lose its vibrancy every time you colour.
5) Grey Coverage- Not everyone has grey that is easy to cover. If you’ve ever experience trouble covering your grey, your formula needs to be changed. This is an easy fix at a salon as a stylist will know what to do, but box colour is unpredictable, and you may find that either not all your grey is covered in the first place, or that it fades away very quickly.
6) Disaster- For varying reasons, you may turn your hair to a colour that you certainly weren’t planning on. Your blonde could turn green, or your brown could turn copper. This has to do with colours mixing while they’re on your hair. If your hair is yellow and you put on the wrong ashy box colour, your hair can very quickly turn to a colour that will be hard to fix.
7) Cost- It may seem like box colouring your hair is the cheaper way to go, but that is until something goes wrong. If a stylist has to fix a colour from box dye, this service can be incredibly costly, and time consuming, as well as damaging to your hair.
8) Health- Often times the products in these box colours are very harsh on the hair and scalp, and have heavy waxes in them. This means that it can clog your hair follicles so instead of having 5 hair strands growing out of one follicle, you only have 1 or 2. This is incredibly important for anyone with thin or fine hair to be weary of.
We realize that people box colour their hair for a variety of reasons, from cost to lack of time to come in to a salon. Whatever your reason, there can be several ways to move you from box to salon colour that is cost and time effective.
Happy Colouring!