When thinking about dying your hair, you first have to ask; What base colour am I starting with? This will determine greatly what kinds of colours will work or not work on your hair.

All hair colours have what we call a hair 'level', with Black being a Level 1 and Platinum/White blonde being a Level 10. The rest of the the colours fall somewhere in the middle; dark blondes, browns, and reds, all fall somewhere within that 1-10 range. While also having a hair level you will also have an underlying colour base as shown in this chart. Black = Dark Red, Browns = Red/Orange, Dark Blonde = Orange/Golden Yellow, Light Blonde = Yellow, and Very Light Blonde = Pale Yellow. These are also the stages your hair will go through when lightening or bleaching, but that's for another blog post.

Now, keep in mind the underlying pigment your current hair colour has and what colour you are trying to achieve, lets work out what colours will work and what won't work on your hair. Example: You have Level 6 or 7 blonde hair and you want to achieve a bright blue shade, if you use it directly on your hair now with your underlying pigment being golden yellow/yellow, you will end up with a green cast to your hair. Yellow + Blue = Green. But, if you wanted to achieve a bright, rich red shade you could easily use that directly over your current hair as red and yellow are complimentary colours. If you still wished to go for that gorgeous blue shade you would need to lift your hair to at least a Level 9 to 10 for a true blue colour. As semi permanent dyes (and demi permanents) only deposit colour and do not lift colour you have to work with the base colour underneath.

If you think about hair colour like painting, it makes a little bit more sense. We are mixing our hair colour with another colour when putting dye onto it, essentially like mixing paints together. If you take a look at a colour wheel it can be helpful to understand which colours may work on your hair and which ones won't. This also helps if you already have an unnatural hair colour and wish to change colours. Everything on opposite sides of the wheel will cancel each other out. This is why hairdressers will use a purple toner or purple shampoo on blonde hair to cancel out unwanted yellow tones. This also works the opposite way (although is used less frequently) where yellow can be used to cancel out purple tones. Red can be used to cancel green tones, blue cancels orange, etc.

Now if we work with the colour wheel instead of against it we can achieve vivid colours that compliment our underlying hair colour and look amazing! If you are on the darker end of the hair level scale you may need to go for a more red based dye (Grimmoire, Charm, Betelgeuse) so it can cover the red base you will be working with. If you have Level 9 or 10 blonde hair, congratulations, you have won the hair dye jackpot and can basically go wild with whichever hair colour you choose! This also includes pastel shades which need a very pale blonde to be achieved. All of our shades can be mixed with a silicone free conditioner to create beautiful pastel colours for our pale blonde witches!

And as always, if you are worried that a shade may not work for you or your hair, feel free to message us on Facebook or Instagram with a photo and we'll do our very best to help!

xo Earth Witch