Hair Color Essay Example

of the natural color or on top of a single base color.

These are referred to as: •Highlighting, where sections of hair are treated with lighteners, usually to create blond streaks. •Low lighting, where sections of hair are treated with darker hair color. These can be applied by the following methods: •Foiling, where pieces of foil or plastic film are used to separate off the hair to be colored; especially when applying more than one color. •Cap, when a plastic cap is placed tight on the head and strands are pulled through with a hook.

Balayage, where hair color is painted directly onto sections of the hair with no foils used to keep the color contained. All application techniques can be used with any type of color. For highlights, the hair will usually have to be bleached before coloring. Bleaching is a chemical process for removal of some or all natural or synthetic color from hair. Hydrogen peroxide and ammonium hydroxide are common bleachants. Any color treatment to change to a lighter color requires bleaching.

Subsequent to bleaching, a light colored permanent or semi permanent dye or toner may be applied. Bleaching has the side effect of raising the cuticle, making the hair more porous. Semi-permanent hair dye has smaller molecules than temporary dyes, and is therefore able to partially penetrate the hair shaft. For this reason, the color will survive repeated washing, typically 4–5 shampoos or a few weeks. Semi-permanents contain no, or very low levels of developer, peroxide or ammonia, and are therefore safer for damaged or fragile hair.

However, semi-permanents may still contain the toxic compound phenylenediamine or

other such ingredients. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that in rats and mice chronically exposed to PPD in their diet, it simply depressed body weights, and no other clinical signs of toxicity were observed in several studies. The final color of each strand of hair will depend on its original color and porosity, so there will be subtle variations in shade across the whole head. This gives a more natural result than the solid, all over color of a permanent dye.

However, it also means that gray or white hairs will not dye to the same shade as the rest of the hair. If there are only a few grey/white hairs, the effect will usually be enough for them to blend in, but as the gray spreads, there will come a point where it will not be disguised as well. In this case, the move to permanent color can sometimes be delayed by using the semi-permanent as a base and adding highlights.

Semi-permanent color cannot lighten the hair. Demi-permanent hair color is permanent hair color that contains an alkaline gent other than ammonia (e. g. , ethanolamine, sodium carbonate) and, while always employed with a developer, the concentration of hydrogen peroxide in that developer may be lower than used with a permanent hair color. Since the alkaline agents employed in demi-permanent colors are less effective in removing the natural pigment of hair than ammonia these products provide no lightening of hair's color during dying. As the result, they cannot color hair to a lighter shade than it was before dyeing and are less damaging to hair than their permanent counterpart.