Corrective Color, High-Lights & Low-Lights

Im back with more hair color!!! LOL

Alright. So...

This blog is going to be all about color correction, high-lights, low-lights, how they can be added into hair, and how correcting hair color is so important in the beauty world. My favorite story is always "well, i wanted to go lighter, so i just bleached the whole thing and it didnt come out how i wanted:/" The best advice i can give to those who try to "blonde" themselves after being box black since forever...spring a little & let a professional take care of it. Its only more damaging to your hair if you try to do it yourself, and then having to go to a salon anyways to have it corrected.

Color correction is pretty much using hair colors with specific udertones to tone and over power all of the unwanted existing tones and shades in the hair. This is really where the color wheel comes into play. We all know the 3 primary colors from kindergarden right?! (Red, Yellow & Blue) Thats how it all started, then comes the secondary colors, and the tirtiary colors and so on. Looking at a color wheel, the color directly across from one another, is the one that you would have to use to cancel out or over power the other. Thats how corrective color works. For example, lets say a client walks in with insanely brassy blonde hair. She wants to be ICEY blonde. If you look at the color wheel, brassy would fall under the yellow/orange category...whats directly across from orange and yellow? Blue/Violet. The cool crisp color tones are directly across the warm fiery tones. Youve gotta cancel out all of those fiery brassy tones with the icey-est, coolest tones to achieve a common medium of the shades your client wants. Look at the Color Wheel picture in this blog, and you'lln see exactly what i mean:)

Now onto highlighting and lowlighting. Highlighting obviously breaks up mass amounts of dark in the hair, and gives it almost a little bit of a shimmer. Lowlights break up mass amounts of light, and puts demension back into hair, giving it movement. In my own personal opinion, i find BRICK HIGHLIGHTING with foils or BOLYAGE HIGHLIGHTING without foils to be the best ways to highlight hair. Its the most natural, and it blends together so well, as oppose to stacking highlights the way they teach you to pass the state board test LOL. The pictures in this blog are pictures of my new lovely client, Judy. She has been getting her hair done by her hair dresser, who happen to origionally put beautiful highlights and lowlights into her hair while also just covering grays with her base color. Her hair dresser had ran into some complications medically, and really was only able to put her base color on just to cover grays, and couldnt perform the task of foiling out highlights and lowlights. After a while of doing that, her hair oxidized and the color got a little brassy (not too bad, just a tad), and her highlights were almost grown out a solid 3 inches. The top of her head was too dark for her liking, and the bottom was almost completely blonde. She almost had an ombre effect, which looked beautiful! Just not the look she was particularly going for. SO...

The first thing i did was just bring up those highlights. I "Mohawked" the foils down her head, probably weaving out about 7 or 8 foils. I then brick layed 3 weaved highlights on each side of her head, and weaved out one foil on each side of her hair line framing the face, so when she puts her hair back, you will still see blonde highlights as oppose to blonde on top and all dark on the sides. I then CORRECTED her slightlly brassy "roots" with a mixture of light-medium brown NEUTRAL tones, also while covering her grays at the regrowth. Once all the foils were in, and the touch up was on, i pulled all of her hair that was not in foils, to the back of her, so i could take an over view look at what i was working with to begin LOWLIGHTING and breaking up some of that blonde at the bottom. I BOLYAGED all of the lowlights. For those who arnt familliar with BOLYAGE, bolyage is pretty much a really cool word for "free hand hair painting" No foils involved, just your creative eye. I picked up small sections of hair by hand, and layed a neutal toned color on the hair that was the same color as the base color. This broke up the blonde at the bottom, creating demension, contrast and movement within the hair. After it was all shampoo'd out, i gave her a beautiful blow out, added to with some beachy waves uing a flat iron. Shes once again beautiful and blonde as ever!

For any further questions comments or concerns, email me at nailsbyalissa@gmail.com, &follow @nailsbyalissa on Instagram XOXO