Chapter 13 - Never Say Dye…Say Rinse, Tint, Lighten

Nature may have given you dishwater hair and pale lips, but she also gave you an indomitable spirit.

Unless you are a member of a distinct minority you probably began experimenting with lipstick soon after you emerged from the cradle.

And, today, your most flattering hair color is very likely not the one nature gave you but one waiting in a bottle, ready to be released like a good genie to spread its colorful magic through your hair.

Pick a color, any color, and it can be yours. It can look so natural even your hairdresser won't know if he doesn't have a good memory for faces; or it can be frankly incredible: mauve, pink, pistachio.

You don't have to worry about exchanging a heavenly halo for a temporal golden one, either. Good girls not only tint and rinse; today, they even bleach.

Today's woman is talked about not when she takes to the color bottle but when she doesn't and allows her hair to go dull and drab.

Men? They rarely suspect. There is at least one Harvard Medical School graduate alive today who still clings to the illusion that his youthful idol, Betty Grable, was born with flaxen hair.

Even the new vocabulary of coloring reflects its universal acceptance. While shady ladies once bleached, hennaed or dyed, today's lady surgeon, account executive or garden-club president, rinses, tints, lightens.

Ask any leading hair stylist what he really thinks about coloring—off the record—and ten times out of ten he will answer: "A woman should do what is most becoming. If her face is youthful, she can let her hair go gray, if she cares to. But how many women with gray hair have youthful faces?"

One stylist predicts: "In ten years only women who do not use lipstick will not use some form of hair color. And in fifteen years, or sooner, hair color will be even more important than hair style."

Or as Thierry, former stylist for Helena Rubinstein salons, observes: "Nearly all women look younger with color. Usually a rinse or tint in the original shade is preferable. However, vivid contrasts and daring colors can be extremely chic on women whose personalities are geared to experiment with latest trends."

Why are so many women deciding to be no longer just a shade away from hair beauty?

Science has evolved not only natural-looking colors but faster methods of application. Color can be added in the privacy of a bedroom or in a grand salon, at lunch-counter or Waldorf prices.

New colors have been formulated to be kinder to the hair. And color not only brightens a woman's hair, it brightens her life. It improves her silhouette, camouflages faulty features, makes eyes look brighter, complexion clearer and adds body to troublesome baby-fine hair.

Actually, the urge to dye is as old as time. Color products are among the oldest known to man. Athenian women dyed their hair blue, blue as the sea, blue as the sky, and sometimes blue with rose like the breast of a dove. Many a Roman matron had her bust chiselled in two pieces of marble, so new styles and colors could easily be substituted in the appropriate shade of marble. This saved the matron the insupportable grief of seeing a portrait of herself that was not a la mode. Even more important, old hair styles could not tell secrets about a woman's age.

From the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, hair coloring preparations were basically the same as they had been in the days of the Caesars. In fact, as late as 1912, a highly recommended recipe for coloring the hair was a mixture of India or China ink, gum tragacanth, rose water and alcohol.

So You Want To Color Your Hair

After years of curiosity, balanced by inertia or indecision, you've decided to cast your hair upon the coloring basin. Comparatively simple, safe and speedy as the aureole process is today, to become a blonde, brunette, or redhead by formula rather than by nature requires patience, time, money and the right natural coloring.

Put aside all thoughts of brightening the corner where you are with anything more permanent than a long-lasting rinse if you are haphazard (a better word would be lazy), about beauty routines. The woman who finds nightly pinups boring will hardly find regular touchups exhilarating. Your hairdresser won't be the only one who knows for sure when a half-inch of mouse gray begins hugging your scalp a few weeks after the great transformation. Uncam-ouflaged new growth is not only unattractive, it displays an equally unbecoming lack of fastidiousness.

The length of parole periods between touchups obviously will depend upon how ambitious your metamorphosis has been. If you go from midnight black to palest buttercup, you will have to hide the persistent sable growth every two weeks or perhaps every week, depending on how fast your hair grows.

But if you select a color in your natural hair color family, or go tone on tone with several different shades of one color rather than one blanket color, you may be able to schedule touchups three to four weeks apart—and the results will be more natural looking.

While it's possible to go three notes up the scale from nondescript blonde to something much more distinctive with a tint which takes little more than half an hour to do its enlightening work, switching from raven to moonbeam blonde can take as long as six hours.

For less drastic, two-process color jobs (lightener plus toner) allow a full morning or afternoon. Touchups will take considerably less time because color is applied only to the new growth. Allow two hours, however, if you've gone palest blonde the two-process way.

Money is the greatest variable. Within a few blocks of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street in New York City, an original hair coloring job can cost twenty-five to fifty dollars and more. Retouches range from ten to twenty dollars. Away from New York, prices for the original coloring range from ten to twenty-five dollars, retouches from six to twelve. At home, the cost depends upon whether you're using a rinse, tint, bleach or toner.

There are experts who insist a woman can go as far as she chooses from her natural coloring as long as she creates a complementary complexion with her make-up.

Others argue just as fervently for never shattering the original harmony of hair, skin and eyes. But most agree that it's much safer to stay within your own color family. Not to mention less expensive and time-consuming.

There are hundreds of shades from very blonde to almost brown, from pushing brown to black, and as much latitude in red. Surely one of these shades will be flattering and exciting to wear.

While young girls can wear almost any color, older women must be decidedly more careful. After thirty-five, women who insist on trying to recapture the hair shade of their youth are actually defeating their own purposes.

Cling to the same color, yes, but cling to it several shades lighter. Take your cue from nature, which lightens hair when complexions fade to make a more flattering frame for mature features. Strive for softer blondes, pinkish reds and lighter browns as you near forty.

Establishing any hard and fast rules of hair color are almost impossible, colorists agree. Complexions are constant variables. These few principles do seem to apply generally:

• Women  with  pale,  light,  nearly white skins  can wear a wide range of colors successfully, especially the dramatic colors: pastel blondes, bright reds, chestnuts and blacks.
• Creamier skins may also add copper and auburn to their repertoire.
• Women with pink-and-white skins can use all the colors their whiter-skinned sisters use. They look well in black, especially if their eyes are blue, light or dark auburn and all shades of brown.
• Women with sallow or olive skin should avoid ashen or silver tones. These shades make them appear gray all over. So should older women. A soft honey or beige tone is more flattering. Sallow-skinned or older women should also avoid reddish-gold tones.

If you are determined to put a little color in your life, proceed with caution. Don't dive head first into a color vat. Now is not the time to become a do-it-yourselfer. Seek out a fine colorist, whether you plan to have a timorous rinse or a daring two-process job.

Only the objective eye of a color artist can select from an infinite variety of possibilities the shade you were bora to be.

And to what avail are locks of burnished gold if they bring out so much yellow your complexion looks as if you were in the incipient stages of jaundice. Equally bad, an amateur job can cry out artifice. Audiences applaud clever make-believe but snicker at poor attempts.

What can a colorist do for your hair that you can't possibly do?

• He can make it look as though it had been touched by nature rather than dunked into one eye-numbing color. Solid color jobs are fast becoming outmoded. There are actually more than ten gradations of color in one head of hair. These same variations are being reproduced by skilled artists today.
• He can successfully drab brassy tones in blonde or black hair. Unless hair is lightened all the way to palest yellow, brown pigments turn red and red pigments turn gold and the result is an unattractive orange tone.
• He can originate custom-blended colors just for you. And with products available only in salons, make porous hair take color evenly from root to tip.
• Like a make-up artist, he can also minimize your worst features and accent your best with color-shaping. Stylists face up to flaws even the most honest woman refuses to admit she has.
• One last advantage. If your colorist also sells wigs he'll probably be delighted to give you a color preview.

Now, you're either going to love your new shade in the mirror, or beg to be a short-haired un-blonde, un-redhead, or un-brunette. Your new color can be removed with a special stripper. Most beauticians don't like this process because it is pungent. Or you can have your beautician tint your hair back to its original color.

Should you stick with your new color—you can't remember ever having looked another way—stick by your colorist, too. However, it's the smart girl who keeps her eyes as well, as her ears open in a beauty parlor.

This way she learns her exact formula and timing, how to make patch tests and touch up dark roots. If she later decides to continue her colorist's good work at home, she'll know how.

Before You Take The Colorful Step

• Get your hair in tip-top condition with  hot oil treatments.
• Snip a lock of hair from the back of your head, for a record of your exact natural color.
• Have a permanent at least one week, preferably two, before you schedule your color appointment. Two chemical treatments too closely placed can weaken hair. A permanent also tends to discolor dyed hair. But even when
• the proper time limit has been observed, make sure your operator colors  a test strand before  doing  the  entire head. Permanent wave solutions sometimes leave hair so porous it absorbs too much color. If all is not yet well, schedule your color job for a later date.
• Make sure your beautician gives you a patch test. There are always a few women who are allergic to the chemicals used in certain coloring preparations. The test has been required by law ever since the passage of the Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act in  1938. A reaction takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours to develop. The Federal government, however, requires only a twenty-four-hour waiting period.

Patch tests are required for touchups as well as complete coloring jobs. The chemistry of your body can change overnight. One woman who had been using a vegetable coloring generally considered completely safe for more than twenty years, suddenly developed a reaction and had to be rushed to the hospital.

• Be honest when your operator asks you what color preparations you have been using. Many colors do not mix, at least not attractively, and even temporary rinses build up coatings which must be removed if a new coloring is to be evenly distributed.

The wise woman approaches her new color step by step, as imperceptibly as possible, unless, of course, she is contemplating a switch from auburn to violet, a metamorphosis even the most gullible male could not swallow.

Permanent, not-so-permanent, temporary, not quite temporary, long-lasting temporary. There are so many types of hair coloring on the market you may not know where to start.

Temporary Hair Colors

If you are merely flirting with color, start with temporaries. Try one shade and if you don't like that, try another and no harm done. If all you are really seeking is new life for drab hair, temporary colors may be all you need to make hair look fresher, younger, brighter.

On your hair today and gone tomorrow, temporaries come in several forms and degrees of stability. But no matter how they come out of the bottle or aerosol container, they all color hair by coating rather than penetrating the hair shaft. Then they all wash out with the next shampoo.

HIGHLIGHT SHAMPOOS: Just as their name implies, they wash highlights into your hair. Depositing the least amount of color of all temporaries, they are best used to accent hair of the same color as the shampoo.

COLOR RINSES: Available in a beautiful rainbow of colors, color rinses are the most popular. They intensify natural color, add highlights, wash away dulling soap film, blend in (not to be confused with covering) gray. White, silver and steel rinses remove yellow from gray hair, while ash or platinum rinses drab brassy blonde tones. Pastel rinses double as toners for blonde or pre-lightened hair.

Many women are disappointed when color rinses do not change them into dazzling blondes or redheads. Rinses can intensify natural hair color, but they cannot lighten it. Rinses can do nothing for hair darker than the rinse shade except add highlights. You can apply a red rinse on blonde hair, a black rinse on brown hair, a brown rinse on red hair, but you cannot go from brown to blonde with a temporary rinse.

Natural shades are used for reviving faded, sun-bleached or permanent-stained hair. Light pastel rinses ranging from cloud white to lilac, with beiges in between, are applied over bleached or pale hair for soda-fountain confection effects. As these colors wash off after a shampoo, it is now possible to be a different color blonde every week.

Frank conversation pieces are the shades never seen naturally on human heads. These, too, can only be used on bleached or very pale hair. They come in green, blue, mauve, apricot, pistachio, gold and silver.

Apply color rinses to hair that has been freshly shampooed with a mild detergent. Wetting agents in detergents make hair more receptive to colors and permanents. Towel partially dry.

The trick is not to let porous areas grab color too quickly. Sun-bleached crowns and permanented ends, as well as hair that has been bleached or tinted or washed with a strong detergent, is more apt to be porous. Apply color first to wots, which are less apt to be porous, then wait until just before you are ready to rinse before combing the color through the entire head of hair.

Some new rinses are so easy to apply, you can add them to your hair in a sitting position.

SPRAYS: Simple to use as lipstick, sprays can change the color of your hair in a matter of minutes, if your object is not the natural look. Blow them on, brush them off, then shampoo them out. Used mostly for exotic effects, they also give you a good idea of how you would look under another color head of hair. Use them, too, for streaking and tipping. While some new rinses have a non-metallic base, most do. Be sure to rinse them from your hair again and again and again.

CRAYONS: These handy beauty aids are the traveling woman's best friend. Wherever you go, keep one handy for touchup duty.

Semi-Permanent Colors

Longer-lasting rinses are the halfway houses on the road between temporary and permanent color. Shampooed through the hair and then allowed to remain until the desired shade is reached, they impart more color than temporary rinses by gently penetrating the hair shaft without the aid of a developer like peroxide. They last through three to eight shampoos, depending upon the brand used, do a better job of covering gray than rinses, and are formulated not to rub off on pillows. Unlike tints and bleaches they leave no telltale lines of demarcation as they make their graceful exit.

Glamour Shampoos

When the mirror on the wall says this is the best color of all, there is still another border town before permanent color, the glamour shampoo. Mix equal parts of shampoo, peroxide and tint. Choose tint in a gold shade if your hair is light brown, red gold if your hair is brown or reddish, ash if it's a pale tone.

Streaking And Frosting

An inspired idea for the woman who doesn't want to go all the way to a lightener is streaking—or its more dispersed cousin, frosting. Wide, swashbuckling streaks are usually most becoming on younger women. Spicy, all-over frosting of tiny strands does the most for more mature women.

You can frost and streak at home (but your colorist will do a more expert frosting job) simply by poking holes in an old bathing cap. With a crochet needle pull out strands of hair to be colored and tint or bleach these outsiders. Now, wash them with shampoo-drenched cotton before removing cap. Rinse. Many sophisticated effects can be attained by adding imaginatively colored toners.

Playing For Keeps—Permanent Colors

A permanent color lasts until hair grows out. It cannot be shampooed out of hair, although a little bit does go down the drain with each washing. There are two types of permanent colors—tints and lighteners—once less euphemistically called bleaches.

Tints do their colorful work by lightening hair and— here's the significant word—adding color to the hair shaft in one operation. They also do a certain amount of conditioning. Actually, the lightener which is incorporated into the tint formula not only creates brighter, more flatteringly youthful shades, it prepares the hair shaft for penetration by the new color pigment.

Lighteners do the same job more dramatically in two steps. First, the lightener subtracts most or all natural pigment from the hair shaft. Then toners are applied until the desired shade is reached. Toners on top of almost colorless hair make a much wider range of colors possible than tints do. They may also be blended for an almost infinite variety of subtle effects.

But lightening and toning is time- as well as money-consuming. It leaves hair dry and porous. Many a synthetic head has found herself guarding each hair as though it were the Kohinoor diamond and combing every lock as though it were not attached to her head.

Lighteners come in two main types. One must be timed and checked and rechecked until the desired shade comes up. The other is self-limiting and demands constant reapplication.

Pigment is removed from the hair in seven stages: black, brown, red, red-gold, gold, yellow and pale yellow.

The initial use of lightener takes anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours depending on the original pigmentation of the hair.
Temporary or permanent toners are then applied, depending upon how often you like to change the shade of your hair.

Touch Ups

Even when the heavens seem in danger of falling, don't neglect touchups. Thanks to the heat of the scalp, coloring of the freshly emerging shafts takes only twenty to forty-five minutes.

Tints

Best ally of the woman whose beauty parlor is her own bedroom is a tint. A tint works quickly—the one step process takes little more than a half hour—and while it does not do as dramatic a job as a lightener and toner it will make a woman one, two, three shades lighter or darker.

A tint can't make a brunette a light blonde, but it can make a medium blonde a light blonde, a light brown head a warmer brown and a redhead a deep brunette.

Tints also cover gray hair. They are available in two forms, creme and liquid. Cremes are designed not to run or drip. Liquids go further per application and are best to use when you plan to blend colors.

If Your Hair Is Blonde: A light blonde tint will make it a delicate blonde without red or gold highlights. A golden blonde will give it golden highlights. Ash blonde lightens dark blonde and adds drab tones to all blonde shades. Ash brown produces a light brown. Dark brown, a dark brown shade, auburn a bright auburn shade. Medium brown will make your hair medium brown, and black, black.

IF YOUR HAER IS RED: Light and golden blonde will add corresponding highlights. Ash blonde will lighten hair slightly. All three will lighten hair in fact. Medium brown adds brown tones, dark brown creates a dark brown shade. Auburn gives coppery highlights. Black produces black.

IF YOUR HAIR IS BROWN: Light and golden blonde will add corresponding highlights. Ash blonde will drab red notes. All three will lighten brown hair. Ash brown will lighten and add ash tones. Auburn will lighten and add coppery highlights. Dark brown will produce dark brown; medium brown, medium brown; and black, black.

IF YOUR HAIR IS BLACK: Light, gold and ash blonde will lighten hair several shades. Ash brown adds brown tones and lightens slightly. Dark brown adds brown tones. Auburn lightens slightly and adds red highlights. Medium brown adds brown tones as it lightens. Deep black emphasizes a deep black shade.

Lightening And Toning

Two-process lightening and toning is necessary if you are to achieve a drastic color change or the flattering watercolor effect of a pastel shade.

Any color is possible with lightening and toning. The results can be completely natural-looking. There is considerably less danger of brassiness if hair is stripped down to palest yellow.

No matter what you use, an application of the original tint, bleach and toner, or long-lasting rinse (only useful if natural hair is gray or lighter than rinse), never let the new application overlap already colored hair. A dark line will result. And the application of chemical on chemical will weaken the hair. If you are using a liquid for retouching, always keep a piece of cotton at hand to sop up any excess that threatens to go where it shouldn't.

Blonde:

Platinum To Ash

With only one life to lead, you are determined to lead it as a blonde. Cliff-hanging ads have pushed your curiosity to the brink. You must discover for yourself:

What shade of blonde should you be?

Anyone can wear a golden halo. But you will go blonde most successfully—that's life—if your hair is already dull blonde or light brown. Tints will lighten your present color two to three shades. Darker hair requires lightening and toning.

Your Best Color

If your complexion is light, almost white, you may find you look best as a champagne blonde, an ash, honey or strawberry blonde.

If your skin is pink and white, try ash, honey, strawberry blonde or copper shades.

If your skin is creamy, ash blonde might be just your color.

Avoid ash shades if your skin is gray or sallow. Choose instead a delicate beige.

Adrian of Maison Antoine thinks graduating the color of blonde from the front to the back of the face gives it a natural, sun-treated look. Hair at front is lightest, goes darker at the crown and is darkest at the nape. Leave this artistic salon touch to your colorist, however; don't try it at home.

How To Achieve Blonde Hair

RINSE: If you are a dull blonde or light brown, add lustre and highlights with the lightest blonde rinse.

LONG-LASTING RINSES: If silver is threading through your gold, use one of these in a shade the same color as your hair.

GLAMOUR SHAMPOO: Will be kind to hair that is more than a little gray and in need of a definite pickup.

TINT: If you would like to go three shades lighter, use a tint three shades lighter than your natural shade. Works best on dull blonde and light brown hair.

LIGHTENER: This is the only way to go all the way from brunette to blonde or achieve a pastel shade.

Remember, golden hair will cast yellow highlights on adjacent skin. Add a little pink to your powder base to abolish that yellow-all-over look.

Red Hair:

Strawberry Blonde To Auburn

Only twelve per cent of all American women are natural redheads, but if men only were to take the next census, they would return with a considerably higher carrot-top count.

The reason is obvious. More women are redheaded today because it is possible to go from medium brown to strawberry blonde or copper without lightening. A tint, or in some cases, a rinse, will do the trick. Lighter and high fashion pink pastels, however, require a two-process color job.

One of the prettiest reds is a medium red frosted with light red to pale to paler to palest strands. It has a wonderful iridescent quality, and has to be touched up only once a month.
Becoming a redhead is simpler than becoming a blonde because most women have ample red pigment in their hair. But if there is a suspicion of yellow in your skin, go easy. Choose instead a warm blonde.

In fact, no matter what your coloring, keep a cool head when you're contemplating playing with fire. Keep away from brilliant reds unless you have a typical redhead's complexion. And if you're over thirty-five, avoid the mahogany shades which can play harsh tricks on your features and skin. Choose instead a softer, lighter red.

RINSES: If your hair is light or dark brown and your skin fair, select a light red temporary or long-lasting rinse for copper or strawberry blonde. Remember rinses don't lighten, merely intensify.

TINTS: If your hair is brown and your complexion is dark, try a chestnut or auburn tint to lighten hair and add coppery highlights.

LIGHTENERS: If your hair is dark and you want a high-fashion color, you must pre-bleach, but hair does not need to be stripped down as much as for a blonde color.

Once you've gone red:

Subdue your make-up and wear a simpler hairdo. Your hair color makes enough excitement.

Neutralize red reflections on skin by blending beige or ivory in your powder.

Brown Hair:

Light Brown To Midnight Black

Jacqueline Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II, and Elizabeth Taylor are all fascinating brunettes who have captured the imagination of the world. And what's good enough for these ladies one would think would fce good enough for the average American woman.

But despite a concerted campaign to push brown hair, the vast majority of American women prefer blonde.

Why not take advantage of the plentitude of blondes to stand out above the crowd with brown hair, the soft color of Stephen Foster's Jeannie or a luxurious, mink shade.
And while gentlemen may say they prefer blondes, they usually marry brunettes, (who often then go blonde). Gold standards are expensive to maintain in any form.

And while you never thought brown a particularly fascinating color, you'll be surprised how warm and exciting mouse-brown hair can be made with the right tints or rinses.

It's comparatively easy, also, and therefore less expensive to go from blonde or red to brown or black. If you are a blonde or light brown or red, you can go to dark brown or black with a tint, and, in some cases, a long-lasting rinse.

If your skin is fair, you'll probably look best as a medium brunette, golden brown, ash brown or chestnut. If your complexion is darker, try a mellow dark brown shade.

But don't set your heart on raven hair unless you are young, very young, and have a flawless pink-and-white complexion like an Irish colleen's. Intense blue-black hair can be the crudest color of all to girls with less than perfect complexions. It emphasizes every blemish. A rich, dark brown can be just as dramatic and considerably easier on your beauty.

RINSES: Will darken your hair.
 
LONGER LASTING RINSES: Will darken and blend in and cover gray.

TINTS: Will give you a more intense and lasting shade of brown or black. If you are brownish and going gray choose a tint just a shade lighter than your natural color.

Permanently Colored Hair Is Delicate Hair

Now that your hair is the exciting color you've always wanted, treat it as you would a precious, delicately tinted silk. With tinted or bleached hair you can never relax your vigilance.

Brush in conditioners daily if you prefer not to look like a straw woman. An don't make hay while the sun shines. Protect your newest attraction from sun and wind with one of the new whimsical beach hats, a smartly-tied scarf (preferably white to reflect the sun's rays), or a fine film of conditioning cream. Both hat and scarf should not be worn so tightly that air is not able to circulate through your hair. Perspiration tends to stain hair.

Don't go near the water without at least one bathing cap; two are more efficient. And be sure to rinse chlorine from your hair at the first opportunity. Allowed to remain it gives even natural blonde hair a greenish tint in addition to making it dry and porous.

The elements also discolor hair. Use color rinses to keep your new shade alive. And when brassy notes creep in, drab them with a long-lasting ash or platinum rinse. Use a matching long-lasting rinse for faded hair.

To look its very best, especially if it's a pastel shade, colored hair must be clean hair. Use a soft brush for fragile hair and select your shampoo carefully. Many beautiful colors are ruined by strong shampoos with harsh alkali content.

Soap, medicated shampoos and even cream shampoos (it's their beeswax content which does it) tend to strip colored hair. Use a shampoo especially formulated for colored hair or a baby shampoo. In fact, take advantage of all the products especially formulated for tinted and bleached hair. Follow up with a cream rinse.

Since it contains less pigment, bleached hair must be handled even more carefully than tinted hair.

Treat your scalp and hair to regular hot oil shampoos. Even the best formulated colors tend to dry scalp and hair. And handle your hair like an uninsured jewel when wet. Don't use lemon or vinegar rinses, which can strip color. Pat, don't rub hair dry.

Colored hair is especially defenseless when wet. Be sure to use plastic or rubber-tipped bobby pins and secure gently.

Be sure that all combs, brushes and curlers which touch your scalp are as penny bright as your hair. Wash them each time you shampoo.

Remember, perfume stains hair as well as dresses. So limit your dabs to your pulse spots.

Touchups are now your constant headache. Choose a simpler hair style now that your color is the center of attention. Ask your stylist if you can't possibly wear your hair without a part. Bangs and cheek curls—any hairline-hiding effects—also tend to keep touchup times further apart. Sometimes a long-lasting rinse is just the answer to your touchup problem, provided your natural shade is gray or lighter than the rinse.

Hair Coloring At Home

You're a do-it-yourselfer, not from inclination but necessity?

Get your hair in tip-top condition with hot oil treatments and conditioning. If hair is over-dyed, sunburned or badly waved, wait until it is normal before changing color.

If you need a permanent, schedule it at least one week, preferably two, before your color job.

Choose a color product made by a reputable firm. Make a point of buying it in a store where there is a quick turnover. Shopworn products sometimes do not develop properly. The fresher the product the better.

Remember, the color you see on the printed chart appears as it would on white hair. The result you get depends on the natural color of your hair.

Read the fine print and don't make any adjustments of your own. Directions may have changed since the last time, so don't rely on your memory.

Wash your hair with a mild detergent shampoo which makes it possible for color to take more easily.

Color-test a strand of your hair. Choose one from an underneath layer at the back of your head. Be sure it's typical, not just a collection of over-permanented ends. Or experiment with swatches from your last haircut.

Even if this is to be your ninety-ninth home-coloring job, give yourself a patch test. It's easy to do.

Cleanse an area about the size of a dime on the inside of your elbow, or behind either ear, letting the cleansing extend partly into the hairline. Dry by patting with absorbent cotton.

Now mix in proportionate parts, a few drops each, the products you will be using. Apply to cleansed area, then allow to dry and remain uncovered for twenty-four, preferably forty-eight hours.

If any reddening, swelling or irritation develops you are allergic to lasting hair coloring. You will probably be safest with a temporary or longer-lasting rinse. But test to see if you are allergic before trying either.

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