Finally figured out why that purple toner kept turning my clients blue

So I've been doing hair for about 4 years now and I kept having this issue where my purple shampoos and toners would leave a weird blue cast on blonde clients. Took me forever to realize it was the water temperature. I was using hot water to rinse and that opens up the cuticle too much so the violet pigments grab too hard. Switched to cool water rinses about 3 months ago and it's been night and day. My coworker Sarah who's been doing this for 15 years told me to also check my developer strength if I'm toning. Turns out using 20 volume when I should have been using 10 was making it worse. Has anyone else run into this with certain brands of toner?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby_sanchez457d ago

Wait, wait, wait. You were using 20 volume for toning? I thought everybody knew that was basically asking for trouble, that's like toner 101 in my book. But the hot water thing though, that's a new one for me, I always just thought it was the product. Gonna have to test that out later this week for sure.

wade_hall6d ago

Oh man, @ruby_sanchez45, you are totally right about the 20 volume thing! I honestly thought I was being clever by speeding things up, but nope, I just fried my ends and had to chop off like 3 inches. Classic me, learning the hard way. The hot water trick is real though, I accidentally figured it out when my shower broke and I had to wash my hair with lukewarm water for a week. Made me feel pretty silly for blaming my toner all that time!