This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

More bang from a box?

Thinking about box color? You might find this hairdresser's answers surprising.

I'm going to be honest with you. I have a love/hate relationship with box color.

First, let me say I have an enormous passion for making people look and feel absolutely wonderful. As a hairdresser it's the best part of my job, and I get to do it every single day. I am willing to work with you and within your budget to do the very best I can do for you. Which is why, as a hairdresser, it doesn't matter much to me if my clients can achieve the color they want at home. We are still working together withing my client's budget. They do a banging spot-on color job, I do a fabulous cut. Teamwork!

I love box color because it does some pretty cool things if used properly at home. In my experience teens and twenty-somethings are the most adventurous with color and they like to change their hair color frequently. This is a fun thing to do, but not in the budget of every young adult.
If you are a change-my-color-up-all-the-time-at-home warrior, the best way to go is to use temporary color or demipermanent color. Temporary color is designed to come out after only a few washes; demipermant color will last a month or so but will fade over time. The benefits of coloring with temporary and demipermanent color is that of all the things you can do, this will damage your hair the least and is the easiest to change. And if a mistake should occur, this is the easiest and least expensive to fix in the salon. The downside to demipermant and temporary color, however, is that you can only change your color within a shade or two of your natural color. These types of colors just aren't built to make changes any more dramatic than that. Another downside is that if you color with these products too frequently or apply it incorrectly you end up with what we hairdressers call hot roots: your roots are the desired shade, but as you go down the hair strand, repeated coloring has darkened the ends to nearly black. You have to go to a salon to fix that. Also, temporary and demipermanent color, because it is so gentle, doesn't have the woomph to cover gray hair completely. It will just tint the gray hairs slightly, so they will still show. Don't fool yourself in to thinking the slightly tinted grays look like highlights. Cold truth here: they still look kinda gray and they will fade out first so they show quickly.

Permanent box color is a completely differently animal. In the way you would treat a wolf with more caution than your pet labrador, you must approach permanent box color the same way. This stuff has teeth, so to speak. For covering gray hair box color is wonderful. Want a color that doesn't wash out? You got it! It is there forever. That's why it's called permanent color. If you love the color your are using and it's covering your gray with ease, no need to change. Just make sure you are using an awesome shampoo and you will get the most bang for your buck. Box color can also lighten your hair within a few shades quite nicely. But only within a few shades. Which brings up some downsides. Try to go too blonde (more than two or three shades) you might end up road cone orange. And as stated before, it's permanent; you you will have to come to a salon to get the best fix. Also, that beautiful, dramatic black color you fell in love with and put in your hair is now yours forever. It is difficult to take out, even at the salon. And if you decide to get highlights, most if not all salons will charge extra for having to wrangle the black (or any boxed color) into a workable shade. And once you put permanent color in your hair - I don't care which shade you choose - you will not be able to go blonde effortlessly or without significantly changing and/or damaging your hair. Also, for the record, shades of red can be impossibly tiresome to get out. So think long and hard before you go with a permanent shade.

The last thing to consider about coloring at home is the time you spend doing it, the amount of mess/cleanup/ruined towels/shirts/sink or tub finishes/etc you want to put up with. Dark colors will stain your skin so splotches around your hairline (yep, forehead: right out front!) will be with you a few days. The back is hard to do. Not everyone has a best friend to help out. There will be missed spots that either look white (Wow! I've only got gray hair right here) or black (whoops! missed that spot when I tried to go blonde!) or worse: the dreaded damage and breakage I see so much of when color is accidentally overlapped or the hot roots that happen when doing a roots-only application is hard so the client simply covers the whole head over and over and over.  And then, I get to try to fix it. Sometimes, despite the price advantage, it's just not worth doing at home. Also, because box color is formulated to be used by non professionals, it has a basic, beginner-proof, work-horse formula that might damage your hair more than a skilled colorist with an awesome salon-grade color would. Again, measure your trade-offs and decide accordingly.

Next week: how to spot a great manicurist and why you should never, ever leave them

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?