Full head colour

Full head colour is one shade applied to all of your hair, root to tip, in a single appointment. Everything gets covered, so what you leave with is even from the scalp down to the ends rather than blended, graduated or placed in sections. It is the most complete of the colour services and it is usually the one people mean when they say they are getting their hair dyed.

What people book it for

• Changing shade properly rather than subtly, where the point is that it should be noticeable
• Covering grey across the whole head instead of only along the parting
• Evening out hair that has quietly become two or three colours while an old one grew out
• Going darker, which nearly always wants the whole head, because a darker shade applied to part of it shows the join

How it differs from a root application

A root application only treats the regrowth, the band of new hair that has come through since the last time. It is quicker, it uses far less product and its whole purpose is keeping an existing colour going. It does nothing at all for the lengths and ends. Once those have faded or drifted far enough from the root, topping up the root stops solving the problem and starts drawing attention to it, and you are back to a full head.

Which of the two your hair needs depends entirely on where the old colour has got to, so it is worth asking rather than guessing when you book.

How it differs from balayage

Balayage is placed and a full head is total. A full head starts at the scalp and treats every part of the hair identically, whereas balayage is painted in selectively down the lengths and never goes near the scalp at all. That one structural difference drives everything else about the two services, most obviously how often you are expected back and what happens if you leave it. There is a separate page on the painted version if that sounds closer to what you had in mind.

How long it takes

Application, development, wash off, toning where the shade calls for it, then drying and styling. Application is the part that varies most. Long, dense or very textured hair simply has more surface to cover and takes longer to saturate properly, and rushing it is how you end up with pale patches at the crown and missed sections at the back that only appear in daylight two days later.

That is also the honest answer to why two people pay different amounts against the same line on a price list. The price covers the work, and the work is not the same size on every head. Whatever the list says is where it starts, not where it lands.

Upkeep

Two clocks run at once, and they run at different speeds.

The first is the regrowth line, and how fast it becomes obvious depends mostly on the distance between your natural colour and the one you chose. A shade close to your own can grow for a long time before anybody notices. A significant lift, or grey coverage on dark hair, announces itself far sooner because the contrast at the scalp is high.

The second is tone, which fades with washing and does not fade evenly. Hair can be perfectly covered at the root and noticeably warmer or flatter through the ends at the same time, which is why the answer to "do I need doing yet" is sometimes yes and no simultaneously.

Rather than working to a generic number of weeks lifted off the internet, ask at the end of your appointment. Whoever coloured it has just watched how your hair took the product and can tell you when to come back with far more accuracy than any rule of thumb.

One thing worth checking first

Full head colour assumes what is underneath is reasonably even. If your hair currently carries old box colour, or bands of different depths left by previous appointments, laying a single shade over the top will not hide any of that. It develops differently on each section and tends to make the unevenness more obvious rather than less. That situation is a colour correction, which is a different service with a different price and a lot more time behind it, and it is better identified before you book than halfway through.

Where to book it

Full head colour is done at both Chop Chop salons, Old Street and Wembley Park, and there are separate pages covering the colourists at Wembley Park and how to look after the colour once it is done. Availability is on Fresha for both.