Do you have grey and dark hair? It is actually much easier to cover white hair and less obvious when your hair is blonde.
As opposed to when it is dark.
Why White Hair Is Challenging
White hair is often coarse and resistant: The cuticle is tightly closed, making color penetration harder.
It can also be porous. It can lack underlying pigment but sometimes absorbs color unevenly.
Often it is also unevenly distributed: Clients often have a mix of white, gray, and natural pigmented hair.
Making white hair coverage a real challenge.
It's Worse When the Rest of the hair is Dark
When a colorist tries to cover the white hair and take it dark brown, and the new white hair grows back, the result is not good.
Here's how one of our clients put it:
"I bleached my hair when I started to have obvious regrowth when dying it dark brown (ie more than a few grey strands). Personally I prefer the look of dark roots on blonde than grey roots on dark hair - maybe your friends are the same."
What Should Women with White Hair Do?
We would suggest you consider taking your hair lighter.
When doing this, we would suggest you use a combination of 2 products:
- a base color, which will act as a filler and help cover your white hair
- a blonde toner, which will give you reflect and nuance and a very natural result.
In addition, if your hair is currently dark or colored dark and you need to use bleach to lift it up.
In this tutorial we will show you how to do this.
Step-by-Step Tutorial for Covering White Hair and Going Blonde
1. Hair Assessment and Consultation
- Evaluate the client's underlying base, or current colored hair. If this is dark, then you are going to need to use bleach before you do anything else.
- Evaluate the percentage and distribution of white hair. Do this by looking at the root area. That is where you are going to be able to say: are you 70% white? 50% white? 20% white?
2. Bleach Your Dark Hair
Your goal needs to be to take your current dark hair to as blonde as you can take it.
Your goal should be level 10 blonde. In other words, a very light color with minimal yellow tones - like the inside of a lemon, nothing brighter.
In order to do this, assess how many levels of lift are required by looking at the chart below.
Let's say your hair is level 6. That would mean that you would need to lift the hair by 4 levels.
3. How to Choose Your Products for Bleaching
You will need a good quality bleach and the right strength of developer.
We would suggest Brilliant Blondexx. It lifts safely and fast, and it contains Bond Protect.
For developer, we would recommend using our new premium developers. They contain Bond Protect and offer a safe and effective lift.
The rule for developer choice is as follows:
Up top 3 levels of lift: use 20 Vol developer.
For anything more than that: use 30 Vol developer.
So for our level 6 hair, we would suggest that you mix Brilliant Blondexx with 30 Vol developer.
Apply it in a 1:2 ratio to all the dark hair.
Let it stay wet so that it keeps processing until it has reached a really nice looking very pale yellow.
Then wash with tepid water.
4. Hair Color Products Which Cover White Hair
You are now going to need to choose one base color and one toner. This will give you the optimum combination of base and reflect.
Color Gels
For the base color, we would recommend our new Color Gels.
They have been made with exactly this in mind: gentle, natural grey hair coverage for women who want to go blonde.
They are ammonia-free and they contain Bond Protect, making them very gentle and effective at the same time.
Be aware that they contain a lot of pigment in order to cover white hair effectively, so they can appear a little darker than other colors that a colorist might have used.
So a level 8 is a really rich level 8: medium blonde.
A level 10 is a full blonde color.
Make your choice from this range for your target color.
Blondify
Along with your color gel, we would suggest you mix in some Blondify toner. This will produce a softer, more natural color result and more nuance.
The 2 toners that we would suggest in particular would be Natural Ash Blonde 010A and Natural Violet Blonde 010V.
Both these toners also contain ash and violet to get rid of any yellow that a client's hair may still have after bleaching.
5. Pre-soften White Hair with Developer
If the client's white hair is very coarse or resistant, you may like to soften up the hair cuticle and open it up.
The usual mild pre-softening step is to apply 10 Vol developer, on its own with a dye brush for 5–10 min, then towel dry (no rinsing) before application.
This step is known by the French name of mordancage and will help to allow you to effectively cover coarse, resistant white hair, especially at the root area.
6. Apply Your Base Color and Your Toner Mix
Mix your chosen Color Gel and Blondify toner half-half. Then pour in as much 20 Vol developer as. you have color - so, a ratio of 1:1, in other words.
Segment hair, and apply with a dye brush. Saturate the roots with extra attention to white patches.
Let the hair process for around 30 minutes, then rinse with tepid water.
7. Aftercare and Maintenance
We suggest that you use Ugly Duckling's purple shampoo and masque for home maintenance to keep brassiness away.
You should alternate that with Ugly Duckling's Brilliant Blondexx Shampoo and Mask. This contains Bond Protect and will keep blonde hair thick, healthy and strong.
