Things Are Getting Hairy

5 min readJun 26, 2019

Check it.

Your hair color: it’s a glorious thing. The way you can shift and lift and change it on a whim depending on your mood. You can switch your look up to alter how the world sees you and how you feel about yourself. You can be (almost) anyone you want to be.

But look, it’s not magic.

You can’t just change the color like you’re painting a wall. No amount of primer is going to make your life that easy. Just because social media shows you incredible images of lustrous, shiny, dimensional colorful hair does NOT mean it can or did happen overnight. In fact, it doesn’t happen as easily as you might think unless you’re cool with buying a handful of wigs. Those gorgeous photos represent masterful work worth of years (sometimes decades) accumulating knowledge in chemistry, technical ability and art. It requires heaps of trial and error and a hell of a lot of patience. Furthermore, you better believe that any photo you see on the Internet has a high probability of being edited in one way or another. You’ve heard that social media tends to be a “highlight reel” so you can only imagine that a stylist, salon or brand is only posting their BEST work…not showing you the disasters that definitely have taken place multiple times during their careers.

Look, if a hair colorist tells you that they’ve never screwed up or learned the hard way, sweetly say “thanks” and see a new colorist immediatly because that person is LYING.

You cannot be a master at anything unless you’ve learned hard lessons.

We’re human, afterall. You needed to crawl, stand, stumble and fall before you could learn how to walk. It’s just a fact.

In my day, I’ve accidentally turned my friends hair orange, blue, and various shades of murky swamp. I’ve melted my hair off, I’ve burned scalps and learned to lean into an asymmetrical chemical cut ALL before even signing up for cosmetology school. A few early pics:

2004: one of my first “highlight” clients in my parent’s kitchen, 3+ years before cosmetology school

Left: My sister allowing me to experiment with pixie cuts, blonding and accent lowlights. Right: Neapolitan Ice Cream hair experiment for…myself prior to cosmetology school.

On the floor at Empire Beauty School in 2008

If you’re thinking you want a big change, you’ve got to be aware of the time and money that it’s going to take to get you there. If you want to keep that beautiful head of hair of your’s, you’ve got to be willing to pay attention to it’s needs. That starts with a healthy body, diet, lifestyle and scalp. Once that hair sprouts from your head, it’s dead matter. The more you process it with chemicals and apply heat from irons, strain from extensions or styling, the more you will damage it. You can protect it with products, sooth and smooth a little havoc but you CAN NOT HEAL THE HAIR. It’s not restorative like your skin. There is no Night of The Living Dead for your strands. If you want to keep your hair healthy, you’ve got to know the rules and abide by them.

Hair color has many levels of depth. The lower the number, the darker the color. If you want rainbow hair, you’ve got to be minimum level 9. If you want to be neon, pastel, or ANY color that lacks warmth (looking at you silvers and blues) then you’ve got to reach level 10–12 no ifs, ands or buts.

If you’re starting at any of the lower numbers, you’ve got multiple sessions of lightening to sit through. If you’ve got artificial color on your hair, add more sessions and warmth to cut through. If you’ve got henna, forget it or shave it and start over.

Color correction on natural level 5/6 with previous lightening through ends done by client. Two sessions of careful lightening of varying strenghts required before pink melt overlay applied.

Remember that each one of these sessions may take 3+ hours. The faster you force your hair to change, the more problems you will create for yourself or your stylist in the future. For any reputable and experienced colorist (see: learned from years of mistakes), this cost isn’t going to be cheap. Cost of products is one thing. Cost of time is another. Cost of education and the knowledge of how to protect the hair, how to balance tones, how to maintain the look and (most importantly) the hair’s integrity: literally priceless. These costs will vary depending on location.

So next time your colorist suggests you take your sweet time going from deep brunette to pearly silver, be prepared and be patient.

And seriously, don’t take your stylist for granted. We are always one slip away from whatever shame I put this mannequin through: