BEAUTY CLINIC: Colour solutions for grey hair

 Jo and Sarah answer real questions from readers: to put your query, go to beautybible.com 

Q My mid to dark brown hair is going grey. It’s coloured shades of blonde, gold and chestnut, on an all over dark goldy-brown tint. I would like a more natural look that doesn’t show the regrowth so harshly. A colourist suggested ‘balayage with a glaze’ – I don’t know what this is! But would it be good for me?

A Leading hairdresser Paul Edmonds (pauledmonds.com) advises you to have ‘a proper consultation with an experienced colourist to guide you through the process of the colour change and produce the correct colour going forward.’ This is where you probably need to do a bit of homework to find the best salon near you. We always suggest talking to other people whose hair is coloured and, if you like the results, asking for the colourist’s contact details.

You should be able to call and book a free short consultation. Assess the colourist’s approach, look at the clients going in and out, and, importantly decide if you like the staff and the salon (you don’t want somewhere that makes you feel unable to say what you really want). Then you can narrow down the options.

In your case, Paul Edmonds says there are a few variables in the way a colourist would approach your hair. The percentage of grey hairs and how/where they are distributed will affect what’s possible in terms of balayage and highlights.

You ask what balayage is: well, balayage (from the French word meaning ’to sweep’) is highlights but it’s a way of painting – or sweeping – on colour freehand to produce a softer, more subtle and natural look than traditional highlights, which are usually wrapped in foil or similar. It‘s quicker to do than foils and shows up much less as it grows out.

So back to Paul’s comments: ‘if you have a low percentage of grey hairs, it’s possible to feather over the grey – ie colour all over them – using a balayage technique, or have highlights to blend with and disguise the grey.’

If you have a high percentage of grey, however, Paul suggests highlights so the colourist can blend different shades to give dimension to the hair.

Using a tint (permanent or semi-permanent) all over the hair will always show regrowth – more so if the colour is different to your natural shade. Paul explains that ‘because tints require developers, they can throw up warmth as these oxidise, hence the warm gold look of your tinted base colour’.

A better approach to disguising a significant amount of grey, bearing in mind you want a more natural look, would be to start with highlights and lowlights at the root, then balayage through the mid-lengths and ends to keep these lighter, giving a sun-kissed look.

Glazes are a recent multi-tasking treatment option, giving tint and condition. They’re used in salons and leading ranges have also recently introduced products for at home application. They work as a finishing touch to either ‘notch up your colour overall or temper it down,’ Paul explains. ‘They’re a great way to tweak or smudge your colour to the right tone and also add more depth, shine and light-attracting translucency to both the natural root and to the coloured part of your hair.’

We love glazes, btw, not just for the colour tweaking but because they enhance the condition of the hair, also helping to tame flyaways and reduce frizz. Unlike hair glosses, which are a very similar treatment option, glazes typically have no ammonia or peroxide so any colour sits on top and they have a shorter life on your hair.

Léonor Greyl has just launched a new range called Soin Repigmentant – nourishing conditioners that beautify and enhance colour. The products, which come in five shades, took several years to formulate, mainly because they’re made with 96 per cent natural ingredients. The promise is that, used every three shampoos, they can make colour stay as fresh as the day you walked out of the salon, and also leave hair, soft, silky and luminous. (We’re big fans of Léonor Greyl products anyway, and this is a fab addition to the at home range – although we’ve been known to take our own products into salons.) Paris master of colour Stephane Pous, the co-creator of the range, says the results make him ‘very, very ‘appy…!’ (The results made us pretty happy too.)

The Léonor Greyl products won’t cover grey but Christophe Robin, another French colour legend, offers Temporary Color Gel, £24, which promises to immediately cover greys and blend with hair colour as well as providing fullness and shine.

Beauty Bible loves… Guerlain bronzer compacts 2019

We know people who collect all sorts of things. Vintage teacups. Books. Teddy bears. Pebbles. You name it, really. But we also know plenty of women who ‘collect’ Guerlain’s bronzing compacts, which are reinvented – emphasis on invention – each summer.

2019’s are especially beautiful, we think. First off there’s the limited edition Terracotta Thalia Island Bronzing & Blush Powder compact, a mahoosive and very beautiful tin with a mirrored lid which contains a beautiful bronze embossed with gold laurel leaves, and a centre dot of pretty blusher, a design which takes its inspiration from Ancient Greek goddesses.

Guerlain Terracotta Thalia Island Bronzing & Blush Powder. A very beautiful tin with a mirrored lid which contains a beautiful bronze embossed with gold laurel leaves

It features their bestselling shade Terracotta 03, which suits pretty much everyone. And being Guerlain, it also smells wonderfully exotic, infused with white floral notes of orange blossom, ylang ylang, tonka bean, vanilla and white musk.) You can actually remove the central blusher/bronzer disc, BTW, either to refill next year or possibly to upcycle it into the sexiest paperclip tin ever.

It’s not exactly sized for slipping in the handbag, however, so we also point you in the direction of the beautiful paisley design Gueralin Terracotta Bronzing Powder, which this year for the first time is served up in a smooth wooden compact.

The beautiful paisley design of the Gueralin Terracotta Bronzing Powder, which this year for the first time is served up in a smooth wooden compact

The beautiful paisley design of the Gueralin Terracotta Bronzing Powder, which this year for the first time is served up in a smooth wooden compact

The idea is that you swirl them together with a generous bronzer brush and sweep over your complexion. Trouble is, you might find it very hard to swoosh the shades together, which will eventually wear away the design.

Which is why (despite the splurge price) we genuinely know women who buy two – one to use, one for their collection, to treasure for decades.

Guerlain Terracotta Bronzing Powder/£56 – buy here 

Guerlain Terracotta Thalia Island Bronzing & Blush Powder/£49 ­­– buy here 

 

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