Toner for Hair

If you are a fan of Marilyn Monroe, you must have definitely wished for pretty blond hair, just like she has. Bleaching is the best way to color your hair blond, if you naturally have dark hair. However, bleaching is just one stage. If you really want to flaunt natural looking hair, you definitely need more than just bleaching. Bleaching renders your hair brassy, which are far from the natural blond hair, you hoped for. This is where the toner comes into picture.

Toners are applied after you have colored your hair with the desired hair color. It is mostly used to enhance certain color tones or to neutralize certain unwanted ones. Sometimes, it can be applied on the natural hair to increase the vibrancy of natural hair color.

However, mostly it is used to give finishing touches to the permanent hair color. Technically speaking, toner is a semi-permanent, acid-based hair glaze, which is used as a corrective technique after a permanent hair color job.

It is also used for highlights in order to achieve the desired effect. It accentuates the overall effect of blond or ashy highlights.

When you decide to color your naturally dark hair to a very light color, such as blond or pale blond, your hair does not instantly change into blond. There are several stages through which the hair goes, in order to achieve the final blond color.

First it turns into brown, then light brown, red, orange, yellow, and then blond or lighter shades. However, in some people, their hair simply refuses to go beyond, say orange.

Had it not been for the toner for orange hair, you would probably end up flaunting vibrant orange color for the next several months. Same applies to yellow or canary yellow shades of hair. Orange and yellow are called brassy colors, which add large amount of flamboyance to your hair.

However, with the help of toner for brassy hair, these unwanted hair color shades can be corrected easily.

Although, it is mostly used to get rid of brassy shades, there are some which are used to accentuate the natural hair color. Toner hair dyes come in two types, warm and cool. Cool toners for hair are normally in the colors of violet, blue, or green. While warm toners are in the shades of golden.

Cool toners are used to neutralize the effect of orange or yellow colors on the hair. These contain violet or blue pigments, which have counter-effect on yellow and orange pigments respectively. The reason is that these colors lie opposite to each other on the color wheel.

Blue pigments give the hair a natural platinum blond shade. Ash toners have blue or green pigments, depending upon the manufacturing company and are mostly used to remove excess orange-red colors from hair.

However, ash toners should never be used on hair that have been bleached or on natural platinum hair. They tend to impart an excess ashy, pale gray color to the hair. The golden toners are rarely used, but are effective in neutralizing excess ashy shades.

Toners are very useful in giving the desired effect to the hair color. Since they are acidic in nature, they seal the hair cuticles and make hair shiny. In short, they act like conditioners, which nourish the dry, color-treated hair. Thus, any hair coloring job would be incomplete without them.