What does the client expect? A great head of gorgeously pigmented hair, achieved after a couple of pleasant hours in the hands of a pro. But there’s a price to pay, and not just in bucks. Dry, brittle hair often seems an inevitable side-effect of permanent coloring. But does this need to be the case?
Permanent colors were invented in the beginning of the 20th century, starting n 1907 with French engineer and chemist Eugene Schueller, who formulated the first permanent hair dye containing synthetic colorants. For its time, this product was considered progressive, convenient, and offered a kind of scientific accuracy which had never been available before: if the label said “Midnight Black”, you would indeed get locks of the deepest midnight black! Schueller launched his brand by mass-producing colors under the company name “French Safe Hair Colorants Society.” Later, the company was renamed. And today, we know it as L’Oreal, one of the most prestigious and familiar beauty brands in the world!
Today, the world market is filled with permanent color brands, allowing the consumer to achieve virtually any shade imaginable. A common experience: the first coloring is the most successful, but over time, the thrill diminishes.
The hair may become dry, brittle, porous, and lose its ability to hold the true tone promised by the manufacturer. Let’s consider how a hair color product works. Lightening products-bleaches-lift color out, but non-bleaches work by introducing artificial pigment into the hair follicle. In order to allow the pigment to “take”, the cuticle of the hair follicle must be opened (think of a pinecone), and this is done through the chemical alteration of the hair strand composition.
Today’s permanent colors consist of two components: an active agent, aka oxidizer or oxidant, and a coloring composition, containing alkali. The way it works: oxidant (stabilized hydrogen peroxide of various percentages (3, 6, 9 or 12%, and with various additives) has to aggregate with alkali.
Forgive the chemistry lesson, but here’s the point: this chemical reaction causes the scales of the cuticle to lift and open, allowing the product to alter the natural pigment and deposit the synthetic color in its place. And when we talk about alkali, the most commonly used member of this family is ammonia. It’s powerful. If you’ve ever disinfected your bathroom with it, you’ll agree! And while the percentage used in a hair care product is quite minimal, this chemical still is powerful enough to create damage in the long-term, as the result of regular use. One of the most dreaded side effects is that ammonia robs hair of its natural tensile strength or elasticity, making hair dull and breakage-prone.
Hairdressers have mixed feelings about ammonia. There is no denying that ammonia is what makes many commercial colors “stick”. However, prolonged exposure, in the case of coloring the hair of multiple clients many times a day, can lead to contact dermatitis, and the fumes may contribute to eye, nose and throat irritation. So, what’s the alternative?
THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
Permanent colors, with their ammonia content, should be handled with care. And professionals often prefer to use them only to create the client’s initial color, and to tint regrowth at the roots. The continuing care of the hair can be better achieved with semi-permanent colors, which are generally formulated with a conditioning base to restore, repair and nurture the hair.
This is preferable to using permanent color because ammonia will progressively weaken hair with successive applications over time. As hair ages, it deteriorates in quality, like any other substance which is systematically stressed and exposed to the elements. Ever hear of “metal fatigue”? This is where even steel or iron will snap from being bent or stressed at a particular point. At some point, the molecules just give up! If this is true of metal, it certainly is true of a human hair.
From the moment it breaks the scalp, hair is subjected to UV damage. Even basic grooming, such as shampooing, combing and brushing, exerts some mechanical stress on the follicle. Ditto for blow-drying and heat-styling. Certain styling products may dry the hair, making it less resilient. And chemical services (especially permanent straightening) weaken the integrity of the hair’s molecular structure. The combination of chemical attack with natural aging means that hair longer that shoulder-length becomes quite fragile.
And, permanent color from roots to tips eventually will create inconsistent results. The older, longer, drier, more porous hair will begin manifest oxidized color—often darker, but sometimes even a brassy red or harsh, purplish blue-red in the case of intense red dyes! To avoid this accumulation, semi-permanent colors used on the longer growth areas have clear advantages.
SEMI PERMANENT FOR MORE CONSISTENT COLOR
The key difference: semi’s contain little or no ammonia. This is because they are not designed to penetrate the hair strand as deeply as a permanent color; in the case of these products, the pigment is deposited on the hair strand. These colors are called “semi-permanent”, because 50% of their coloring pigments are molecules ready for work, they form a coating on the hair surface. The remaining 50% are not yet active. They are “launched” with activator, and form inside the hair.
As a rule, all semi-permanent dyes simply deposit pigment on the outermost layers of “virgin” hair. When applied to hair which has already been colored, which is by nature more porous, the molecules of even the semi-permanent color enter quite deeply into the hair follicle. This is because the cuticle has already been “roughed up” a bit — again, think of the pine cone opening its scales — by previous color services. Therefore, it is unnecessary to color regrowth with permanent colors, which are by their nature potentially damaging. Because prior coloring treatment has in essence already damaged the hair (however slightly), the cuticle is open and semi-permanent color achieves virtually the same effects with less ammonia and less damage in the process.
BLONDES DO HAVE MORE FUN…WITH SEMI’S!
While semi-permanent colors have obvious benefits for creating subtle tone shifts as well as for taking the hair a tone darker without forever altering the client’s natural color, creating the dream-blonde without permanent color service has proven tricky. Because many customers of blonding demand that their hair be as blonde as possible at all times, stylists in the past may have erred on the side of using harsh products in the interest of lifting out the client’s dark roots and going blonder than blonde!
Lightening the hair is by definition traumatic. This certainly is not to say that being blonde isn’t worth it — simply that the process stresses the hair, calling for expert handling and a solid conditioning regimen to keep the strands healthy and bouncy. Semi-permanent formulas today are enriched with nourishing agents which strengthen the hair and counteract the impact of coloring, so they in fact have much to offer the client who flees the Dark Side for the lightness of being that is blonde.
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