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Coloring your hair at home is a huge savings over having it done for you by a licensed stylist at a salon. The differences seem small and unimportant but depending on your skill level and previous coloring it can be a much bigger divide than you thought. Here are the basic differences between salon and at-home color, and why it may or may not be better to do this in a salon with a professional.
Accuracy
The biggest difference between having your hair colored at a salon by a professional and doing it yourself at home is the accuracy of the color application. Even if you have never made the mistake of leaving out a patch of hair while coloring, you surely have seen others who have. The look is not the end of the world, but it is clear to anyone who notices that you did the work yourself at home and you did not do the best job. A simple fix is to have a friend help you out to make sure you get good color saturation, though no one is foolproof.
Accuracy when covering your roots is even more important, because if you are only adding color to the roots of the hair and you over-apply you will end up with up to three different shades of hair, all in one relatively small area. A hair beauty tip to avoid this problem is to invest in a few professional stylist tools like foils, hair clips and a color “paint brush” for precise color application.
Over-Coloring
Even though at home color comes with instructions regarding root touch ups, many women who only need a root touch up instead color their entire head. This means you end up with layer after layer after layer of color on the longer sections of your hair. By layering so much color, you get a mottled and uneven look. Coloring the entire head when you only need a root touch up also means you end up with roots that take the color normally and the rest of your hair that takes the hair and lays it on top of the previous colors. The color variations based on roots versus previously colored hair are often most noticeable when vibrant red hair color is used. A simple hair beauty tip that helps avoid this issue is to select less vibrant reds. You can still get a great auburn shade with rich tones and not get as stark a color difference between your roots and the rest of your hair.
Cleanliness
Having a professional apply hair color with the appropriate tools and a stylist’s smock covering your body is much easier than doing it yourself. There are many bathroom casualties of at home color. Whether it is the paint job on the walls, the Formica countertops, or the new bath mat that was pristine, many bathroom decorations and fixtures fall victim to the box of hair color. If you are exceptionally careful and are comfortable working on your own hair, go ahead and color it. If you are clumsy, challenged by gravity or uncomfortable apply liquids, gels or mousses to your own hair pay the extra dollars to a stylist and save your bathroom the pain.
