Coloring Your Dark Hair

Coloring dark hair can be a significant challenge that can take a while for many salon artists to master. Thankfully, there are many hair color companies in the USA that can help you out here. We at Beecher Group – Artego USA have many different products that you can use to help with this sometimes challenging process. And we also know that it is necessary to help you out. The following tips should help you work with dark hair more successfully and give you the chance to make great new looks for your clients.

The Challenges of Coloring Dark Hair

When you open up a salon and start coloring hair, you’re going to quickly feel your stomach drop every time somebody with dark hair walks through the door. These individuals are likely charming people, but their hair is going to be your worst nightmare. Black hair – or even very dark browns – familiar on Asian, African, and Latin-American customers is often the toughest to color.

That doesn’t mean that you’ll have an easy time with dark hair from other customers, either. This challenge arises because darker hair needs to be adequately prepared before you do any coloring. This preparation includes bleaching or lightening the hair to make sure that it can accept the color. You also need to make sure to work with the person’s skin tone to ensure that they get an excellent color.

As a result, hair color companies around the USA have to carefully design their color options to ensure that stylists like you don’t have it so rough with dark hair. That said, there are also steps that you can take to make sure that this doesn’t go as tough for you. Talk to your customers about these ideas before you do them to ensure that you get the best results from them possible for your unique needs.

Tinting is a Great First Step

If you find that your client doesn’t want to bleach their hair – and who can blame them? – you may have to consider a tint instead. Tints are a unique approach that doesn’t strip the color of your client’s hair but, instead, lifts the hair and helps to place the new tone directly into the hair shaft. This option is great because it won’t damage your client’s hair and can still give you quite a few different tone choices.

Understand, though, that this process takes a bit longer to perform than bleaching – up to about an hour – so talk to your client about this before you begin. And make sure that you look through catalogs from hair color companies to find a tint that works for your client. There should be something that they end up liking because most companies produce a surprising array of different choices for you and them.

Understand, though, that this process will only add another five degrees of lift to a client’s hair and is useful only to lighten their hair a few shades. You can still get some great looks with tinting – we’ve seen dark-haired women and men with light blue-tinted hair – but you can’t get the kind of light and bright colors that some clients may crave. As a result, you may have to go for a different approach.

Adding Extensions to Create Unique Contrasts

When tinting doesn’t work for your clients, or they want to create a more subtle look for their new hair, you may want to consider colored hair extensions. Many hair color companies produce these unique products, and they have many design possibilities. For example, you can match your client’s original color with that of a slightly different extension and weave them throughout their hair.

The most significant advantage of this approach is the lack of chemical damage that may occur. Though bleach and tints won’t kill hair and are perfectly safe to use, both do cause some injury to a client’s hair follicles. This problem is not a factor with extensions. They weave into the hair to create a very subtle look, one that is often quite textured and hard to resist for many clients.

That said, there are limitations to this approach. Though it does create a beautiful blend of tones for dark-haired clients, it isn’t a huge change compared to tinting or bleaching. And it can much, much longer to do than either approach because you’ll have to weave the extensions in their hair carefully. When done right, though, this is an excellent approach that many of your clients will love.

Bleaching Is Good for Heavy Lightening

Lastly, you may need to bleach your client’s hair if they want a very light color that you can’t get in any other way. We’ve implied throughout this article that bleaching can be damaging to a person’s hair, and this fact is true. However, bleaching is still the best and most effective way to lighten a person’s hair enough for lighter colors. As a result, you should always have plenty of bleach from hair color companies in your shop.

Typically, you want to try to bleach the hair as little as possible to avoid damaging it. One bleaching is often enough to achieve a lighter tone. However, you may also need to do it a second time if the hair doesn’t get light enough. A third bleaching is a rare situation and only occurs if somebody wants their hair to be nearly white. Remember – the dark tone of their hair is gone until it grows back out.

But once you’ve gotten their hair lighter, you should find it very easy to apply just about any color to it and to get it to stick. Therefore, we suggest bleaching only or those who want a permanent or semi-permanent change to their hair tone. It is usually not a good idea, though, to bleach hair too soon after dyeing. Let the color sit for at least several months before changing it up again. Otherwise, you may damage your client’s hair.

Getting the Best Hair Color Your Clients Deserve

As you can see, the dark hair doesn’t have to be a barrier to your success at your salon. Working with the best hair color companies, the USA has to offer can do a lot to help. So please make sure to reach out to us at Beecher Group – Artego USA to learn more about this process. Our experts are skilled at providing a myriad of hair-care options that will transform your business and make you more successful. We fully understand how to color dark hair and will make sure that you know, too.