Help needed from Professional Hair Colourist

Ria

Can anyone give me some advice please. I have been colouring my hair myself with L'oreal Crescendo professional colour for years and it has saved me a fortune. Unfortunately this product has now been discontinued. This product was in liquid form which was easy to measure but now the nearest thing I can get is Majorel or Luo products which are in gel form & come in a tube. Can you give me some idea of how to measure these gels please? Do you have to use gel peroxide with these products also? I think Luo comes ready mixed? I should be so so grateful for any help you could give me to match the current colour also. Thanks

ALternatively does anyone know where I could still get some Crescendo 8.3 Light Golden Blonde & 7.4 Copper Blonde??

empy

hi, As hairdresser I used the loreal range at collage last year when I did my training, we mainly worked with the majirel range, these are permanet colours and require the loreal peroxide to go with them, the stength depend on your current hair colour, condition and porosity, they are come in 6,9,12 % generally we used 9%.

The mix is 75mls of peroxide to 1 full tube of tint, I think. The luo colour range I believe is a quasi, i.e will fade and not have no regrowth, this has its own peroxide which I believe is 3%, you can not lift colour with this so you will not be able to go lighter, only the same or darker.

May I suggest though as you are not trained why not try your local hairdressing college you can usally get your hair coloured for about £10,00 and you wont need to worry about over processing etc.

If this is not possible I would recomend the loreal diacolor range as these are a gentle quasi, with only 3% peroxide and are less likley to cause damage in untrained hands, they are also lovely tints and leave the hair shiny and soft.


HTH

Empy

Ria

I cannot afford the cost of going to a salon every 6 weeks so I really need to resolve this problem. The above are permanent colours which were mixed as follows: 30ml 8.3 lighter tone with 10 ml 7.4 warmer tone and 40ml of 20 volume peroxide. This is a translucent product which looked really natural. My problem is (a) finding a suitable alternative colour in another product and as I cannot match exactly so will have to mix 2 new colours together and (b) finding out how to measure the gels - if I wanted 10ml of a colour would that be so many centimeters of squeezed out product? Is the peroxide measured in the same way or could I still use liqud peroxide? I should be so grateful for some further advice.

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

Hi Ria,

Thanks for the PM. As you know I used to work as a senior colour technician at Toni & Guy. But it's been about 3 years now and so I haven't used the new Luo colour and therefore wouldn't dare comment on it, but I have heard it to be very good.

I would suggest majirel as being your best bet as it is the most similar to the crescendo. In theory the colour system is the same (if you go to a wholesalers such as Sally's you should be able to compare the two colour charts) and so you should get a very similar result by using 8.3 and 7.4 in majirel (lovely colour choice by the way!) I say similar as I believe the crescendo is slightly more translucent in it's coverage than the majirel (I didn't often use crescendo but that is how I recall it anyway, someone will correct me if not 100% accurate - there's quite a few hairdressers on MSE). If this is too bright/deep you could mix in a little base 8 in place of some of the 7.4 I am assuming you have some grey you want to cover (as you've been using 8.3 which is a golden base colour - ie you need a base or a golden base for grey coverage) so that's another reason majirel is a good choice. If you have just a sprinkling to blend in then as empy suggested the diacolour gelee is worth considering, which I wrote a bit about in earlier threads, and I use it regularly on my own hair.

The mix for majirel is 75mls of oxydant (cream, not liquid) to a 50ml tube of majirel. There is an instruction sheet inside the majirel box and it includes the mixing quantities and development time. But just mix it in a bowl with a tint brush slowly adding the oxydant bit by bit (worth buying a little measuring jug), not the "majirel shaker". For grey coverage you should use 20 vol oxidant which is also called 6%. I've found the cheap ones from Sally's (wholesalers) are no better/worse than the L'Oreal ones, except in price and they are sometimes a little runnier which may help in the application anyway. You should use the same mix as before ie 3/4 of 8.3 to 1/4 of 7.4 If your hair is average to thick then probably 3/4 of a tube to 1/4 of a tube plus 50ml oxydant, this is the easiest quantity for the first use anyway, you can reduce it next time if there's wastage but keep the proportions the same.

To apply it, divide the hair into 4 roughly equal sections (a hot-cross bun section) and apply to the roots one section at a time, staring with the section with most grey (usually the front two sections). You can do this by taking slices about 1cm apart and working from the top of the head to the bottom of each section. This is hard to explain without showing you or drawing you a picture, but I'm sure you'll find your own method that gets even coverage without taking several hours!

The development time. Now this is for Ria, who has already coloured hair and I am assuming some grey (if you're not Ria, or if Ria's hair hasn't any grey then this will be different!). Development time is 35 minutes for the regrowth application. If the ends need a little refreshing you can take the colour through for the last 5 minutes of development time. If they are slighlty faded you can take the colour through for the last 15 mins. (Before anyone corrects me - we are using 20 vol oxydant remember but if it was 30 vol then you'd add a little warm water to the mix before taking the colour through to the ends).

Don't leave it on any longer than the recommended time, you won't get a deeper or longer lasting colour - you'll get the opposite, the undercoat will lighten too much and the hair will be a little drier/porous and so the colour will be less "deep and long lasting" not more.
Also think about room temperature if it's not average temperature. For example in the winter when we have central heating on and windows closed all day it gets really warm indoors and so the colour develops quicker so I take it off a few minutes earlier. But on a cold winter morning before the central heating kicks in the colour will take a little longer to develop.

You may find the majirel a little harder to wash out than the crescendo and therefore staining is likely the first time, so don't use it the night before going to work/a wedding etc etc (In emergencies try milk or cigarette ash). To wash it out, wet the hair a little at the roots with warm water and massage to loosen the colour/product, this is what we call emulsifying. Add a little more water bit by bit, keep massaging so you are using the colour to remove itself, it's hard to explain but once you get the hang of it you'll see how colour removes colour and eventually you can do so without any stains.

Oh, and DO A SKIN TEST BEFORE YOU USE IT!! It's unlikey you'll have problems but it's better to have a small reaction to a little dab of colour on your arm or behind your ear than to have it when your whole head is covered in colour.

If I've not covered everything, ask away...