HAIR COLOURATION AT HOME WITH LIVE

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HAIR COLOURATION AT HOME WITH LIVE

Whether you’re a home hair dye virgin or regular user, here’s what you need to know to dye your own hair and ensure you get the best colour of your life.

Before you dive into dyeing your hair, you need to make sure you’re picking the right colour for you. If you don’t, it might turn out to be a tone you didn’t quite expect. Follow the three golden rules below for hair colouration and you’ll get it spot on every time.

Think about your natural hair colour - this will help you decide how light or dark you want to dye your hair. This doesn’t apply as much if you’re going for blue hair or lilac streaks (we recommend LIVE Pretty Pastels Lilac Crush and LIVE Pretty Pastels Denim Steel if you are), but if that’s the case you need to understand that unless you’ve pre-lightened your hair, if you are naturally dark, pastels and pale colours won’t give you the results you want.

The condition of your hair is a big deciding factor in how a colour will appear. If you’ve bleached your hair regularly it will be more porous and soak up more of the colour. This could cause it to turn out darker than you expected.
Decide how you want your colour to look. If it’s more natural, stick to tones that are similar to your natural colour as this will help give a 3D effect as well as making your hair look thicker. If you’re still stuck and could do with some hair dyeing tips, all is not lost as Schwarzkopf has a customer advisory service that you can call beforehand and they will advise you on the right products for you depending on what you want to achieve.

If you’re planning on choosing a LIVE colour, you could also enlist the help of our Virtual Try-On. Simply use your camera phone to take a selfie and you can see what all the shades will look like on you - it’s not only great fun, but it will really help you to find your perfect match.

The how-to of hair colouration

Preparation is key…

Always do an allergy test 48 hours before you dye your own hair. It’s easy to do and takes seconds - just pop some of the Colour Cream on the inside of your elbow and after 45 minutes rinse with warm water. If nothing happens, you can commence the hair dyeing!
Another must before you start is to check you have enough boxes of hair colour. If you have super long or thick hair, it’s always a good idea to invest in two boxes so you get a full and even coverage - you don’t want to be caught short halfway through the hair colouring process and end up with unevenly dyed hair.
Dress for the occasion. While ‘Oleo’ Intense is non-drip, if you’re a first-timer or don’t want to risk one of LIVE’s rainbow colours staining your skin, wear an old t-shirt or something you don’t mind getting dye on. A pair of vinyl gloves is a no-brainer and any hair colouring brush will work.
Finally, our last hair dyeing tip is to read the instructions included in the pack - this will tell you everything from how to mix the colour to the processing time.

Next comes the doing part...

Section your hair, ideally in four parts from forehead to the nape of the neck and then from one top of the ear to the other. It’s also a good idea to add some petroleum jelly around your hairline before applying as this will stop the dye bleeding onto your skin.
If you’re choosing permanent hair colour to dye your own hair, it will need to be mixed but if it’s semi-permanent it can be applied straight from the tube so make sure you have everything you need in front of you.
If you’re touching up your roots, dot the colour onto your hair and rub into your roots, making sure you don’t overdo it and apply too much. Then leave to process.
If you’re colouring your whole head, always start with the mid-lengths and ends and apply the colour as you would a conditioner, squeezing it into your hands and then rubbing it through your hair. If you’re struggling, see if you can enlist the help of someone else - spouse, sibling, offspring - they can help you with any hard-to-reach areas and give it the once over to make sure every strand of hair is covered during the hair colouring process.

Once that time has passed, pop your gloves back on and apply warm water to your hair, working it into a lather then rinse until the water runs clear.
You might have noticed there’s a Care Conditioner in the box. This is the time to use it. Apply it to towel-dried hair and leave for 2 minutes before rinsing out. This will lock in the colour and seal the cuticles to stop it escaping.
Now you’ve finished dyeing your own hair and conditioning it and now it’s time to style it. Do this as you would normally then tag us on social media with the finished results! @livecolour #schwarzkopfuk

To check out the Oleo Intense range click here while you can find everything you need to know about LIVE here.