When you spend money on a hair color treatment, you want to keep it that way for as long as possible. Unfortunately, various factors can cause hair color to fade, including excessive washing, harsh shampoo, not using the right product for color-treated hair, and excessive chlorine exposure. If you want to stretch your dollar and make your hair color last in between salon visits, it’s all about giving your hair some extra TLC. There are practical steps you can do to your hair to keep color vibrant and fresh.
How to Maintain Your Hair Color Between Salon Visits in 7 Steps
Follow these seven hair care guidelines for color-treated hair to keep that healthy glow and vibrant color until your next salon appointment.
Know The Hair Color Cycle
Let’s be honest: hair color won’t last forever. The hair coloring products will eventually fade, causing the hair to lose that tone and become dull or dry.
Understanding the hair color cycle allows you to adjust your hair care and styling routine to preserve the tone for as long as possible. It is also crucial to enhance hydration and care for your hair, as some hair color products can make your hair strands prone to dryness.
Your hair color looks its best in the first few days after your salon appointment. After a couple of weeks, that color begins fading and becoming less shiny. Within four weeks after your salon visit, your roots will start to show, and the hair will continue to lose its tone.
Starting two weeks after your salon visit, you must focus on increasing hydration and preserving the tone to keep it vibrant and shiny.
Avoid Certain Hair Care Ingredients
When you have a new hair color, changing your hair care routine is essential. Choose hair care products with non-stripping ingredients. You cannot use regular hair products not designed for color-treated hair.
You must look for ingredients like silicones and sulphates, as they strip your hair of moisture, making your strands look dry and brittle a few weeks after your color treatment. Also, choosing the right hair color treatment product is key. Avoid using hair color products containing ammonia. While ammonia helps to open up the hair cuticle during the hair-dyeing process to allow the colors to penetrate deeper, it can also make the hair color fade quickly and irritate your skin.
Therefore, ensuring that your hair color lasts between salon visits involves making the right decisions before and after your treatment.
Skip Daily Washing
If you want your hair color to last longer between salon visits, avoid washing it daily. Shampooing your hair strips away the dye that gives it that color. If you wash your hair, use a shampoo and conditioner designed for color-treated hair.
You can also use a reverse shampoo method. Instead of using shampoo to wash your hair, use conditioner. Conditioner adds moisture to your hair to keep it shiny and locks in the tone, helping prevent faster fading.
Deep Condition More Often
If you haven’t been diligent with using a hair conditioner, now’s the time to get started on this habit. Your colored hair needs all the moisture it can get to stay glossy and maintain the vitality of your hair color. However, conditioning is insufficient, and you must deep-condition your hair regularly.
Deep conditioning nourishes your strands with helpful ingredients, and some products have color-enhancing pigments. Dry and damaged hair is prone to fading, so to make your hair color last longer, you should invest in treating damaged hair and keeping it moisturized.
Minimize Heat Styling
Some experts agree that heat styling can be one of the worst enemies for color-treated hair. Hot hair styling tools and a lack of heat protection products can devastate your hair color, causing it to fade quicker and lose its shine.
You should never skip protection when heat styling or reduce your reliance on heat styling products. While many women rely on hair dryers and hot irons to style their hair regularly, you can switch up your routine to skip heat styling whenever possible. Some days, you can air dry your hair, especially on weekends or when you’re not in a rush.
If you use hot styling tools, never go without heat protection products, which provide a protective barrier for your strands against excessive heat.
Invest in Color-Safe Hair Products
Choose hair care lines made for color-treated hair. These products are made of color-protecting or enhancing ingredients. These products enhance your hair color pigment while helping lock in the tone to prevent fading. In addition, these hair products are gentler on your strands so that they won’t strip your hair of its color and natural oils.
However, not all color-safe products are made equal. Choose the right product depending on your hair tone. For example, blonde hair colors will benefit from purple-tone shampoos, as they are formulated to fight brassiness. Purple shampoos also enhance the tone of blonde hair colors to make it look vibrant and shiny.
The rule of thumb is to avoid hair products containing sulfates, sodium chloride, and parabens. These products strip away the natural oils in your hair, which can be detrimental as colored hair is already on the dryer side. Keeping your hair moisturized and healthy goes hand in hand with treating colored hair and keeping the color for longer.
Schedule Regular Salon Visits
The final tip for maintaining your hair color is to regularly visit your trusted hair salon in Brooklyn. These experts know your hair best and can recommend the best ways to treat it to keep the color looking vibrant for longer. Some salons can give your hair a quick toning touch-up or a deep conditioning treatment so that your hair color can keep its vibrancy.
Aside from preventing hair color fading, hair care and styling experts can help you maintain overall hair health.