Getting the right shade of blonde

Discovering the right shade of blonde is not an easy task. I asked Louise Galvin, one of the UK’s leading colourists and daughter of the legendary Daniel Galvin at whose London salon she is based, for her advice.

Not everybody can go blonde. How do you decide if blonde hair is for you?

“In general, the rule is to not go more than three or four shades lighter than your natural colour. Stay within that spectrum and you will find a flattering blonde for your skin tone.”

Choosing the right shade of blonde is not easy. How do you choose the right blonde for your skin tone?

“If you have high colour, i.e. pink or red skin tone, I would recommend avoiding anything too warm or golden tones. Never be afraid to go to a salon and ask for a professional consultation. All good salons offer this as a complimentary service. They will then look at your eye colour, skin tone and natural hair colour to advise you on the correct and most flattering colour for you. Where possible avoid over processing hair to protect the condition.”

Can you go from brunette to blonde?

“You can certainly go to a dark blonde. If you have dark, Middle Eastern colouring you will need to be careful that you don’t end up with anything too light as this would be damaging to your hair. Your natural colour will be an indicator on whether your colourist chooses highlights or a tint to achieve the blonde you want.”

Louise Galvin

 If you have dark eyebrows should you change them?

“No! If you are lucky enough to have dark eyebrows, enjoy them!! The eyebrows frame the face in the same way that your lashes frame your eyes.”

What shades of blonde suit more mature women?

“This is again dependent on your skin tone and your natural hair colour. If you look at some of the more mature actors they each have a blonde colour that suits them personally. Helen Mirren has highlighted blonde hair, Meryl Streep is a tinted blonde and Glenn Close is a creamy blonde which is a tinted blonde with highlights. 

“Also when looking to colour more mature hair remember the most youthful blonde is one without any brassy tones and well-conditioned locks. I would recommend a twice weekly Intensive Treatment Masque (www.louisegalvin.com £26) to restore moisture and shine.  

Also have your hair cut regularly to keep dry ends away but don’t think you have to have your hair cut short as you get older. Hair can be worn longer if it is well conditioned.”

What are the trends and how do you adapt them?

I still believe there is no fashion or trend in hair colour other than the hair colour that suits you.

How do you stop blonde hair looking brassy?

“My Vitox Highlight Brightener (www.louisegavin.com £25) is a phenomenal vitamin infused natural detox for the hair. Vitox will lift out both environmental and product build- up leaving highlights refreshed and free from the khaki tones that can be a result of mineral deposits in our water supply or swimming in chlorine. Well-conditioned hair is so important to achieve shine and a more youthful glow.”

What’s the best way to prevent your colourist over highlighting?

“Ask your colourist to apply colour to the roots only (the Vitox Treatment mentioned above is perfect to refresh blonde highlights after your colour). Also make sure your colourist picks out the same highlights to avoid roots becoming over processed and too solid. This will help with maintenance too, If too solid the regrowth will show almost immediately.”

Examples of celebs that look great blonde and those that don’t

Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn, two very different generations who both have blonde hair and look fabulous with it!  Cate Blanchett is a great example of an Icelandic blonde, Jennifer Aniston a beautiful golden blonde and Alicia Silverstone a pretty cool blonde.

I much prefer Nicole Kidman with red hair and Julia Roberts is another actor more suited to being a brunette (Sleeping with the Enemy) or a redhead (Pretty Woman) than a blonde.

By Daralyn Danns

Brunettes and greys

Louise Galvin is one of the UK’s leading colourists and daughter of the legendary Daniel Galvin at whose London salon she is based. I asked her why brunettes have difficulty when covering grey?

Brunettes find it much harder to cope with those first grey hairs. “Vegetable colours can end up grabbing the ends, highlights can go too brassy. What do you advise?

“I always carefully paint out those first few greys with a little colour for as long as possible. Less is more in this instance but too many colourists will insist on a full colour at the first sign of grey – too much and not necessary.”

What are the general guidelines in choosing colours when you have 50 per cent grey or more?

“I often do highlights and then paint colour between the lights to cover grey, using the lighter grey tone as your lightest ‘light’ to add contrast and allowing the grey to shine through as a natural tonal light.  Colour glosses really help at this stage of the greying process to blend and soften grey with a translucent colour.”

A bad hair colour can age you. For example, if you go too dark, it can emphasis lines and wrinkles. While going too light can drain you. How can you hold back the years?  

“Condition! Condition! Condition! Hair that is well conditioned and glossy is always more youthful. Try my Sacred Locks Intensive Treatment Masque (£26, louisegalvin.com) once or twice a week. This really infuses the hair with moisture and nourishment. Improving the health of the scalp as well as nourishing hair and taming frizz, the silicone free formulation is created to deeply condition the hair without weighing it down. When colouring, we keep the hairline a shade lighter than the rest of the hair to ‘light’ the eyes and create a pretty soft halo effect.”  

Highlights or a single process? 

“Everyone’s hair is unique, I personally prefer to highlight hair for as long as possible. However as the hair becomes greyer (75 per cent or more) a single process is usually required to truly cover grey. But I still like to add some lights throughout to add movement.”  

What are the pitfalls of colouring dark hair at home?

Choosing the wrong colour. So many people think they are a light brown but are in fact a dark blonde. There is a big difference and we have so many people contacting us about our Louise Galvin Hair Colour Remove (£14.95, louisegalvin.com) to help remove a too dark colour without damaging the hair.

“Also, many home colours are sold as semi-permanent when in fact they are permanent colours. Remember: if you have to mix two bottles together, this is a PERMANENT colour and will need to grow out rather than wash out or fade over time.”

If you do want to do it yourself, how do you choose the right shade from the rows of shelves in the supermarket/chemist?

“I would always recommend going to a salon for a professional consultation – most good salons offer a free colour consultation. Really listen to the colours they are suggesting and ask lots of questions.” 

What about touching up roots yourself in between salon visits? 

“I haven’t yet found anything that is widely available that I think is great. But, if you find something that works for you, this is fine. Old traditional Roux sticks (£7), available from pharmacy shops such as John Bell & Croyden (johnbellcroyden.co.uk) can be good. A great tip for ‘emergency cover’ is Batiste Dry Shampoo for Brunettes, Blondes etc (£3.99, Boots). These will help until you can get to your colourist.”

There are always stories in the press about the risk of using hair dye, especially if you are a brunette. Please comment.

“Unfortunately, hair colour is a chemical so it is important to always do a patch test, particularly if you have sensitive skin.”

How do you keep dyed hair healthy?

“Use gentle products that don’t strip colour. My own range of products, Louise Galvin Sacred Locks and Natural Locks (louisegalvin.com) are all formulated to protect colour and are free from SLS, parabens and silicone so they will not strip colour. And referring back to my Condition! Condition! Condition! mantra, if hair is nourished colour will be locked in more effectively.  I recommend to all my clients to use a treatment on their hair at least once a week.  My formulations are so natural the masque can be left on overnight, adding moisture and shine without weighing the hair down.”

Good and bad examples of brunettes? 

“I think both Kate Middleton and Samantha Cameron are the perfect brunettes – their hair always looks glossy and vibrant.

“Meryl Streep in August : Osage County – the colour is so solid and draining, perfect for her character. There is no movement or tonal quality to the hair which is incredibly ageing and not glamorous.  

 “Cate Blanchett can also look very ‘washed out’ when playing characters with brunette hair as she has such alabaster skin.”

By Daralyn Danns

Why is it so difficult to colour brunettes?

Louise Galvin, colourist extraordinaire, has a client list that reads like an edition of Who’s Who. 

Her passion about hair is evident from the moment she starts speaking. Louise is also creator of the carbon-neutral beauty company, Sacred Locks, which was born out of her frustration of finding good hair products on the market. Silicone is her bugbear, which she believes, coats the hair and weighs it down as well as making it look dull. Lacklustre hair certainly piles on the years.

I am a fan of her Nourishing Conditioner for Dry/Damaged Hair
(£7.95, louisegalvin.com) which helped restore the over-processed hair which I had when I first went to the Daniel Galvin salon, owned by Louise’s father and where she is based.

After telling her how thrilled I was with it, we got on to the subject of why is it so hard to find a colourist who can do brunettes. (Covering greys will be dealt with in another post.) 

Here is what she told me.

Why is it so difficult to colour brunettes? So many colourists can do blondes, but when it comes to brunettes they seem to get it so wrong.

“Most problems start when hair starts to go grey, colourists often are too heavy-handed with colour. Colour can be too dark or too warm (too much red tone). When going grey it is not only the hair pigment that changes. Skin tone and eye tone are lightened in the ageing process and areas of high colour on cheeks and foreheads can appear. 

“Brunette hair naturally has a lot of red pigmentation, your colourist will need to neutralise these tones as most brunettes do not want to be too red.  

“The most common problem is that many colourists will try to take you back to your natural colour. However with ageing the hue needs to be softer and more flattering. Poorly dyed hair will drain colour from the eyes and skin. My father, Daniel Galvin, has a wonderful quote:  ‘The first thing you notice about good hair colour is the colour of your eyes, the first thing you notice about bad hair colour is the colour of your hair ‘!”

How do you achieve a good colour?

 

“I like to see colour and movement in hair. This is achieved by having multi-tonal lights through the hair with slightly lighter shades around the hairline to lift and brighten the face. It is essential to keep hair in top condition to ensure hair looks youthful and glossy.”

What questions should you ask your colourist to ensure you get perfect results?

“Be firm in telling them you DON’T want colour to look dark and heavy. All too often colourists take the colour throughout the hair when only the roots need to be done. The colour can be massaged through the whole head of hair just for the last five minutes of the process to intensify and refresh it. This will avoid heavy colour build up on the ends of hair.

"Make them aware that you have red tones [naturally in your hair] and do not want to intensify the pigment. What you want is to neutralise the red to give a true brunette. To look natural, they will need to match your colour to your skin tone to achieve the most flattering shade."

By Daralyn Danns

Fixing hair colour disasters

 

I’m sure I am not the only one who has had a hair colour crisis. The sun-kissed tresses that make you look like you have gone into competition with a traffic light, the few highlights you love turn into a whole head. You want to be brunette, but it ends up looking so dark and dreary people think you are going for an interview for the part of the wicked witch. And so it goes on.

Even putting your tresses in the hands of some so-called masters doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get a disastrous concoction. Been there… Good colourists really are a rare breed.

So, what do you do when it goes wrong? If it is the first visit to a salon, go back and tell them. Give them a chance to fix it, unless you feel that they can correct the mistake. If they are not getting the colour right, or at least moving in the right direction after a few visits, go for a few consultations at different salons, before making a decision about what you want to do. It can take several visits for colour to be put right, so don’t dismiss it when a colour specialist tells you that it may take six months to achieve your perfect hue.

Too orange

Liz Edmonds, colour director at Daniel Galvin told me that usually, when she has to do colour corrections, they are the result of botched home jobs. “A common mistake is taking the colour through to the ends each time it is applied,” she says. “Hair gets darker and darker until it is too dark.”

But, don’t despair, this can be put right. Louise Galvin’s Hair Colour Removal system (£150, Daniel Galvin) may be the answer to your prayers. It shouldn’t damage the hair as it doesn’t contain ammonia or peroxide. Your hair is taken back to its natural state, so you can instantly recolour it. 

Another method Liz uses to take the heaviness out and soften the colour is a detox treatment. This pure vitamin C solution won’t harm the hair either. “For really bad hair we use a technique called white washing which removes some of the colour,” says Liz. “The drawback is that it can make the hair colour warmer as you are drawing out the red pigment. If the hair is too warm, we then have to neutralise it with a “flat” colour or ash shade.”

Getting there

If your hair is porous, it will soak it up dye like a sponge, especially on the ends and, therefore, if you or somebody has not taken this into consideration, your end result may not be what you hoped for.

Over-processing can cause damage to the hair making it look like a bed of hay. So, go easy on the highlights. “If you keep adding lowlights to the hair, it will eventually look too muddy,” says Liz. “If this does happen, go for a warmer shade.”

Liz also suggests using vegetable colours to perk up hair that has gone too yellow or flat. “It will even out the shade. A colour bath is a good remedy for tangerine-like locks, but it is a slow process. “However, quick fixes will cause more problems,” she explains. “This way your hair will get into a better condition so the colour holds well.”

By Daralyn Danns