I looooved this post by HAIR DRESSER ON FIRE. She is so inspiring, talented, creative and on and on and on.
(Shades EQ by Redken is the gloss used in every salon I’ve ever worked at!)
I’ve mentioned glosses several times on HDOF and today is your lucky day, because I’m going to talk about them more. Hairray.
A short description of a gloss would be the following…A semi-permanent haircolor done at the shampoo bowl to achieve desired hair tone.
If you’re a blonde: You know, you can’t really be anything but plain old blonde unless you do a gloss after highlighting your hair. Bleach just pulls out color, and doesn’t tone as it’s pulling. It goes through the different levels as it lightens, but once those oranges and coppers are all sucked out and you have your blonde, that’s really just supposed to be your blank canvas. You have the whole world (I mean, color world) at your finger-tips at this point. You can do a peachy blonde, or a rosey blonde, a strawberry blonde, a golden blonde, an ashy blonde, etc. If you’re not trying to be a blonde and you just have highlights for dimension, you can also tone them down to just a shade or two lighter than your base color. Warm, cool, ash, whatever. You can do anything!
Also, toning your blonde hair makes for a much less frightful regrowth line.
If you’re not a blonde: Let’s say you had color forever ago but you grew it out. Now you have your natural down to your shoulders, and everything below that is some strange reddish (or other kind of ish) aftermath of your fading color process. You don’t want to dye over it because that defeats the purpose of going back to your natural. By doing a gloss, you are just toning those ends to match your natural so the growing out phase is a little less painful.
If you’re bored and dull: A gloss is a great way to freshen up your color. If you feel like the elements have dulled it inbetween color services, or even if you don’t color your hair, you can just slap on a gloss and feel new again. I have loads of clients who get their same exact color, just in a gloss for shine and umph. You can even get a clear gloss!
A gloss is very similar to a single process, except that it is translucent, and lays on top of the hair instead of penetrating it. The fact that it is translucent is what makes it so dang shiny. If you’ve ever had a gloss you know the shine I’m talking about.
A gloss is done after you shampoo the hair. It’s applied on wet hair and usually sits about 5-10 minutes before it is rinsed (not shampooed) and conditioned. It doesn’t require normal peroxide, so it causes no damage at all. Depending on what formula you use and what kind of condition your hair is in, it can last as long as 4 to 6 weeks.
Is there anything I’m missing? I’m pretty sure I’ve never said “gloss” or “shiny” so many times in my life. They do go hand in hand though!
Stay tuned for my gloss formula!
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