From AHHHHH!!!!! To Ohhhhh... Corrective Color AKA The Hairdresser's Worst Enemy

Whether its your client, your coworker's client, some other salon's client, or they did it themselves, corrective color is NEVER easy.  It's probably the single most thing in my hairdresser world that makes me want to throw up, scream and make my lower gut feel yucky all at the same time.  Impressive, I know...

Last week I had a client come in who was scheduled for a single process color.  It was not scheduled incorrectly, but in reality it was.  The poor girl came in looking like she had no color on her hair at all.  After sitting her in my chair, she informed me that she had henna in her hair about four months ago and she wanted to go lighter all over, Henna: Pain in the butt to get rid of.  Its a metallic dye that can be actually pretty damaging when trying to remove it.  I won't even attempt to use all the scientific lingo my boss did last week in explaining to my client, JoJo why henna is actually not better to use than regular hair color. Long story not so short I had to strip JoJo's hair.  Which means I had to bleach it to remove all the henna and possibly any other color that may have crept in there unbeknownst to either of us.

AAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

This was her hair today after I stripped it.  I used foil and paneled it all the way around with 30 and 40 volume mixed.  I left the root area out because there was no color on it and I did not want it to get too light. Its hard to tell in this picture but the first half inch of the "orange" is actually quite blond. My mistake was that, even though I was trying to avoid lightening the natural hair, I brought the lightener up too high. This is a picture she was sending to her friend as both of us (I more secretly) were freaking out.

No matter how many times I have done correctives, I still get really nervous.  You can never predict how someones hair is going to react to what you are about to do.  Even though I did do a test strip on her hair last week, its still hard to tell how saturated her hair was with the henna, which can build up and make it more difficult to penetrate. So, at this point it was time for me to apply her base color.  She wanted to be a warm medium brown, about a level 6. So, knowing that her hair is dark and it will most likely pull warm no matter what I put on there, I mixed Redken gels 6NA and 6N with 20 Volume. I liberally applied this color to her root area and was not too particular about it getting on the pre-lightened hair. The color did make that really light part pretty ashy. As I noticed that happening, my hands started shaking and I wanted to vom.

I also knew that I needed to pull color through her ends and it would need to be warm to counteract any muddiness that may occur. I mixed Shades EQ 7GB, 7G, and 6GB. Luckily, I was able to mash that warm color into the super ashy part up top and let it sink in. I let it all sit for 20 more minutes while I ate my lunch. Mind you, the whole time I was applying the color, JoJo was asking how it was looking and I reacted totally calm and collected. Later, she told me that she could tell I was nervous. Once the color was finished processing I told her we may have to glaze it again to ensure the validity of the color. I was secretly jumping up and down because I could tell I made the right choices with my colors and It looked really good. I did end up doing another glaze with Shades 6NB and a little 6GB.

Ohhhhhhh......

That's right! It looks amazing!! Thanks to JoJo's patience, and my killer instincts, the color turned out fantastic.  Yeah, there are a couple spots that are a bit iffy, but she knows that it will take a couple times to be perfect.

So, when doing a corrective color, always follow your instincts.  If you think you made a mistake, go back and fix it. Remember that everything is fixable and DO NOT FREAK OUT!!