Hair Seattle: transformation, a journey from light to dark

Before and After:

This is an interesting case. It's not every day you get the opportunity to color someone from platinum to dark brown. Stylists know this is a hard process, almost as hard as doing the opposite (almost). The trouble is it's easy to turn the hair into 'shoe polish' as they called it in beauty school way back when.

I was able to take her from very bleached out to a dimensional sparkly brown and in the middle of it, we got to see what she looked like with a color close to her natural. She's the kind of person who likes to be on the extreme ends of the color spectrum and that really does fit her personality better but it was fun to see the very natural color in the meantime and it was a wonderful way to fill the hair and avoid the shoe polish trap. We ended up with a beautiful sparkly brown and I go the satisfaction of knowing I was able to do one of the hardest things to do in hairdressing.. I'm feeling pretty good about that!!

The Process:

(I didn't warn her I was doing pictures and she graciously agreed to let me take photos even though she didn't wear any makeup, thank you thank you thank you!) Note, from the "before picture" above I had done two foils of lowlights because we were on the slow track to getting her back to a more manageable blonde with less upkeep, but she called me up out of the blue and was just ready to go for it and no-holds-barred go dark.

The first thing I did was foil in some conditioner foils to keep some of the very light hair. My thinking was that even when we got to the dark brown, she would get some dimension from this step. To be honest, I have to puff my chest out a bit on it because it worked like a charm.

Then I painted in between the foils with a color I was guessing to be close to her natural color. Number one I thought this could act as a filler and number two it's been so long since she had been a color close to natural we ought to do it just because after we made it dark we wouldn't be able to again.

Here's the middle color (close to her natural color - but her personality is much more drawn to hair colors that are on either the lighter or darker extreme from her natural. In general, I try and keep people no more than three shades lighter or darker than their natural, except in a case like this where I know the person is really committed to it. Also, because we are going to keep it dark for a good long while with glosses I know we can grow her hair out to a length she likes and keep it healthy). Anyway, here is the 'middle step' of the process:

This is probably where I would have stopped that day and let her live with it for a month and then come back and put the dark color over that. But she was 100% ready to be dark brown so I put a second gloss over this one of a level 4 and level 5 mix in the Keune Semi (a gloss that leaves the hair shiny and in excellent condition.

I was so pleased with the rich, sparkly brunette we achieved in one day from platinum, check it out! (of course it was the worst possible light for a picture, but in the close up you can see the sparkle in the hair.. and for people that don't know how difficult it is to get hair that has been stripped of all its pigment to look a natural healthy brown.. this is one of the hardest things a hairdresser can do! Sure, going platinum is scary and not breaking the hair is real concern, I'm not trying to minimize or anything.. But something like this takes real skill, artistry and truly tests your professional abilities. Stuff like this keeps me sharp!