Looking after a full head colour

A full head colour is at its best on the day it is done, and everything after that is maintenance. This page is about the weeks in between: how colour actually behaves once you take it home, what shortens its life, and what tells you it is time to come back. It is written for people colouring at Wembley Park, although hair has no idea which salon it was done in.

The first week

Freshly coloured hair is still settling. The cuticle has been opened to let colour in and it takes time to close down again, which is why the first wash matters more than the tenth. Hot water and a heavy foaming shampoo will pull more colour out in those first few days than in the fortnight that follows. Whoever colours it will tell you how long to leave it before washing, and that is one piece of advice worth actually following.

Colour does not fade evenly

• Reds and coppers go first. Those molecules are the largest and they wash out fastest, which makes red the highest maintenance colour there is.
• Ash and cool tones do not so much fade as lose their coolness, letting the warmth that was always underneath come back through. Blonde looking brassy is usually this rather than the colour changing into something else.
• Ends give colour up faster than roots. Older hair is more porous, so it takes colour in greedily and lets it go the same way.
• Grey coverage gets judged at the scalp rather than the ends, because that is where the contrast is visible from across a room.

What shortens it

• Washing more often than you need to. Every wash costs you a little colour.
• Water temperature. Cooler is genuinely better, if less enjoyable in February.
• Heat styling with no protection. Straighteners on full heat lift tone out of coloured hair quickly.
• Strong sun and chlorinated water, both of which shift tone before they do anything else.
• Clarifying and anti dandruff shampoos, which are stripping by design and do not make an exception for your colour.

None of that is a rule you are obliged to obey. It is simply where the colour goes when it goes.

Home care that earns its place

Use a shampoo made for coloured hair, wash less often, rinse cooler, and use a heat protector whenever heat is involved. A conditioning treatment every week or two is worth the effort if your hair is long or has been lightened, since those are the sections carrying the most previous work. Dry shampoo between washes buys you days rather than fixing anything, which is fine as long as you know that is what it is doing. Anything specific your colourist recommended for your colour beats general advice written on a page, because they watched how your hair behaved on the day.

When to rebook

Four signals, and one of them usually turns up before the rest.

• You can see the regrowth without going looking for it, which is a different thing from knowing it is there
• The tone has drifted, warm where it was cool, or flat where it had depth in it
• The ends feel drier than the rest and have stopped holding shine
• You have started styling around it, parting differently or wearing it up more than you used to

The last one is the most reliable indicator and the one people notice last, usually about three weeks after everybody else has.

The most accurate answer to when comes at the end of your appointment. Ask then how long yours should hold, and whether something shorter than a full head, a root application or a toning refresh, would carry you through the middle stretch. It depends on what was done to your hair specifically, so it is a question for your colourist rather than for a search engine.

Coming back

Rebooking with the same person at the same salon is worth doing for one practical reason. They can see how the colour has behaved across the weeks since they did it, and adjust the next one accordingly. That feedback loop is most of what makes a colour better the second and third time you have it done. The Wembley Park salon is on Weaver Walk, HA9 0GX, 020 3488 1492 reaches either salon, and availability sits on Fresha.