Any hairdressers can advise?

Roxie

Hoping any hairdressers can advise if salon colours are really superior to box colours?   I’ve been using Nice & Easy since lockdown and am happy with the results/grey coverage and the conditioner with it leaves my hair feeling good, but since having a couple of cuts with my hairdresser in past few weeks I feel she is pressuring me to resume having it coloured with her.  Is the box colour ruining my hair as she is suggesting? Thanks in advance 🙂

joedenise

I'm not a hairdresser and used to colour my own hair regularly (don't bother now I've decided to grow old gracefully!) and I've never had my hair professionally coloured.  My current hairdresser says my hair is in great condition and all I do now is wash and condition it a couple of times a week.

So I think the answer to your question is 1) ignore your hairdresser 2) find another hairdresser 3) give in to the pressure but not for her reason!

Roxie

Thanks joedenise.  I am thinking of changing hairdresser, depending on responses I get here. 

BrassicWoman

Box colour tends to be harsher because it's a "one size fits all" - they use stri=onger agents so it will "take" for most people. That might be stronger than you need.
And it's easier for someone else to see where touch ups are needed. So, it'll be a bit shinier over time, and the colour will be more even, at the hairdressers. I think it is easier to get away with box colour on short hair as there are fewer visible transitions between colour applications.
So it's a trade off; cash versus how bothered you are about the above, with a bit of length consideration thrown in.

-taff

Depends. Is your hair grey underneath because if it is, you can always tell a bad home dye job by the orangey colour hair gets when someone tries to dye it brown or dark brown or god forbid, black.

I used to dye my [increasingly grey] hair with a mid brownish  or red dye but didn't actually notice that my hair was actually stripey, you could see where the dye had been each time I dyed it because I wasn't keeping with a colour I would naturally be. And the colour would take much more on the previously dyed bits

I went to the hairdressers after that so they could lighten it gradually and then get to my normal colour now [ completely grey ]

goldfinches

I tend to look at other people's hair at the moment because I'm currently trying to decide what, if anything, to have done to mine. I have taken to trying to spot those with hair very similar to mine who also have a good cut or colour and then buttonholing them to ask who exactly they go to and how frequently do they need to go and how much and so on.
You will appreciate that there are a lot of people to look at and most of them I shouldn't care to emulate!
Interestingly the answers for good cut vary quite a lot from I do it myself to a very expensive salon in a town 25 miles away. The answers for good colour are all a salon in wherever and I go at least every 2 months and it costs £60 or more and takes a minimum of 2 hours usually 3-4. 
So I suspect that your stylist wants you to do her credit and is sending a coded message! But there again I could be entirely wrong, I'm just guessing based on what I see around here which is not the most stylish of places.

Apintplease

I home coloured from 15 to 45

Get yourself a bowl, a tinting brush and a wide tooth comb

Mix and pour some in a bowl and then part your hair and just paint the roots. Keep making partings both sides and just to the roots. Then comb all your hair back off your face and do the hair line - make sure you clean off any forehead wipes.

Only then, add what is ever left to the rest of your hair, twist it up. wrap in cling film and wait 20 mins

Doing it this way means you don't get that harsh colour build up that looks so false

If a lot of grey , then find someone to do the back partings and roots, my husband used to do mine

Just don't slap a box of colour on every six weeks, it will look so false and horrible

Caramac

I used to colour mine using a semi permanent colour every three months in a colour similar to my own but with a little bit of warmth and it looked good (and natural). Once it stopped covering the grey I tried a permanent colour which also looked great the first time I used it, subsequent applications were not a good look. It is only now looking back on photos I realise how bad.