Hi, everybody. It's Lisa Kelly. I wanted to do a class today to talk to you guys about formulation.

Now, this I believe strongly that this is the one thing that if we learn as stylists and we get this down cold and understand it and understand these these steps of formulation, that this is gonna solve most of our problems.

Number one, all color works the same, all color is made the same, and everybody teaches the same four steps of formulation.

So it doesn't matter whose brand you use.

You can take these principle and you take it from one brand to another to another. So you can now shop for color. You You can get a better priced color, get a more cost effective color, save yourself money. And this is the one area I see on social media a lot of people asking questions.

Which toner should I use? What should I do here? What's what's the best for this? What's the best for that?

If you understand the four steps of formulation and how to actually execute them, then you never have to ask these questions. If you're asking the questions, it's because you don't understand how to formulate hair color.

And it's of course, it's gonna work differently on every single, texture and color that you do it on, but the rules stay the same. And once you understand them and keep applying them the way you should, you are gonna have the best turnout. And there's no more reason to ask questions. There's no more reason to feel locked into a line of color or a brand of color because you understand that one and you're afraid to move to another one.

They all work the same. Are there slight differences? Absolutely. But the rules don't change. And I wanna go over the rules.

You could switch color lines every week in your salon. You would still use the same four steps and the same rules to achieve the color that you want through this. These four steps of formulation were designed by the chemist to keep you in the best possible spot or get you as close to your goal, or if not right on your goal as possible. The thing is we have to follow them.

If you're just guessing or grabbing or throwing something on ahead or you saw it on social media or you saw somebody do it, it's not gonna work the same for you. You have to do it to the person and the hair type and the hair color that's in your chair. So let's talk about it. Our first rule of formulation is always, where am I?

You know, I always like to give the analogy. This is sort of like MapQuest back in the day before GPS came up. You plug in your starting address, you know, the the number, the street, the city, the state. You plug all the information in, and then you plug in where you're going or where you wanna go, and it spits out directions for you.

You. And it's basically the same doing color formulation. And the first step is is where are you?

What is the fabric of the hair? What is the color? What is the level and tone? There's no guessing here.

You can't guess. You have to use your swatches, your swatch book. I like swatch books like this that you can slide into the hair, and that's exactly how you should do it is slide this into the hair. Now they're not all long like this, that you have the ability to do that.

And if it doesn't match up to the natural series, you have to find the series that it does match up to. Maybe it's golden tone. You wanna get the gold series and match it up, but you gotta get the level and tone. This is step one.

There's a couple of footnotes to step one. One, if you can't decide if she's a seven or an eight, you always formulate to the darker color.

That's a big rule. It'll always keep you on the safer place at the other end by formulating to the darker color. So if you're unsure, make sure you go work for you. You have some like this that are the the swatches are smaller.

You can still use them. You can take these pages out. It's in a three ring binder. I like these swatch books.

If you're a colorist, this is the type of book that you want to work with. Take it out and match it up to her head. Now, you do have to use the swatch book of the color line that you're working with.

All of these swatches match the color in the tubes. This is not hair. Nobody makes swatch books from hair.

This is done with fishing line or or nylon, and they're different that, like, some are not shiny, some are shiny.

I like these more natural type of type of swatches, and these books are great. It's just a great tool to work with. If you have them, they're in a circle on a on a board, you can't take them out, you can't hold it up. It really makes it harder for you to really go in and match where you are.

This is not an easy thing to do, to get all of your swatches and say, this is exactly where I am. Because if number one is wrong, where you think you're starting from, if number one is wrong, if we're off with this, then everything you do after that is wrong. So we wanna be right. It's the first thing you do.

You know, I've been doing color for longer than I care to say, and I still would never start a formula on a client without taking out a swatch and seeing where I am.

This is so important.

If people think they can guess, you're wrong. You're you're gonna make mistakes doing this. Once you get this down, your eye gets trained better, you start seeing things differently, not to mention it's gonna be maybe it's a level darker at the base, level to two lighter on the ends. Maybe this is virgin hair.

Maybe this is colored hair. You have to know where you are. What is this color? What is this color?

In order for you to achieve the perfect result.

Now, what I have found with a lot of the stylists as of late, some of the younger generation stylists, this is why we go they go to toners. They use shades EQ or all these demi permanent colors because you don't have to formulate. You know, what you see is what you get. You just slap it on over the whole thing, and and it kind of self corrects itself.

The problem is those colors don't last. They're going to wash off and fade because they're made to fade. They're going to wash off and fade and you're left with a mess underneath. If you want to learn how to do hair color, you have to learn this.

If you wanna just slap stuff over the top and cover it up and try to hide it, you know, that'll work for you for a while. But if you truly wanna learn to be a colorist, these are the steps that you take to do it. There is discipline required to be a master colorist. And number the step one is the most important thing for you to start from.

What level? What tone? What texture?

Is it previously colored? Is it virgin? Are you doing a virgin application? Remember, there is still times and, circumstances that you're doing a client that you have to do a virgin application, and it's more often than you think.

So putting it on the roots and slapping it through the ends, this is not disciplined master colorist level. This is hairdressers putting, color on hair versus a colorist who is actually knows how to fix whatever it is or achieve whatever it is that they wanna fix. So that is step one. We have to do it.

These are these books are great. So when you're shopping for a product line, when you're shopping for a hair color line, you know, look for books like this. Look for a book that's in a three ring binder like this or like this, then you can take the pages out and you can use this as a guide. You have to be able to do this.

If you can't, if you eyeball and guess, you might be right half the time, and you're gonna be wrong half the time. And we can't learn the mistake when we're wrong. Was it because you guessed wrong? The formula was off.

Why was it off? All of those things. But when you start doing this, you really start learning how to tweak and adjust and and completely predict the results you're gonna get once you start doing this. That's step one.

Gotta follow it. Gotta do it. Keep good notes.

Write it out. Put it on there in in their, folder or whatever software you're using in in in their file. Make sure you do all of this so you can go back and go, maybe I was off on the natural level. The formula didn't come out quite as I didn't get as light or didn't do this. And you can go back and look to see what you wrote down. Step one is so important. If it's wrong, everything you do after that is wrong.

And step two is the second part of the map quest, is where am I going?

Where am I going? Am I, changing the tone? Am I lightening her hair? Am I darkening her hair? What am I doing? What is the goal that she wants to achieve? And, you know, let's just do it as doing a simple gray coverage right here.

As you're looking at this gray coverage section right here, you know, let's do a simple gray coverage, formulation where she just wants to cover the gray.

So step one for doing this section is matching up her natural color. Well, when I look at this hair, the first thing I'm gonna do is decide, is she more gray than natural? Is she more natural than gray? This particular section of hair, she is more gray than natural.

So I am formulating for the gray, not the natural. The natural helps me to know, which I do go in and find out what that is. The natural helps guide me to know what color I'm gonna use to cover this gray.

But I am formulating for the gray, not both. I just want to cover the gray. I don't wanna take her back to this natural color, her natural color here, because it'll feel too dark to her.

Typically, when you've bend this light all over and you go back to your natural, it's gonna feel funny to her. But this becomes part of the consultation that you're having while you're deciding what you're gonna do to this client. Client. She just wants to cover her gray.

Now covering gray doesn't mean every single hair on this head should be the same color. We're gonna get into that in another formulation class and it's huge, for us to talk about grays being forty percent of what we do. So I just wanna cover the gray. Her natural so So I have to separate it.

I have to take sections and move it aside and see if I can decide what it is. But that natural brown hair was a level five. I just wanna cover this gray. That's all we're doing for the client.

So I know where I am. I know she's more gray than natural. I know her natural is a level five.

I alls I wanna do is have coverage to this, and coverage again doesn't mean every single hair is the same color.

For this unnatural to her. Every single hair the same color. It doesn't work the same on everybody.

One size doesn't wider pieces because when I color this, the the the wider pieces are gonna look a level lighter than her natural color. If I put a level five on this, all these white hairs are gonna look more like a level six. And it might be a perfect multi dimensional look for her. We don't have to go shoe polish level four to make this look like it's all coverage.

Coverage is part of the colorist consultation is what do I want the finish to be. We're on step two. Step one is where are you? Step two is where are you going?

And where are you going is all about this type of conversation.

Looking at her skin tone, looking at her eye color, talking to her, understanding that, you know, one solid solid color, every single hair the same color doesn't work for her. I want it to be multidimensional, and that's what happens when you put one color off five different levels of hair. We have gray. We have brown.

We have white. We have in between. So I put one color on this. I'm gonna end with a multidimensional finish.

That's not a coverage issue. It's a finish issue.

If I wanted every hair the same color, we would be going a different way with it, which we'll get into in another class. So I just wanna cover these grays. That's all she wants to do. I know where I am. I know where I wanna go.

Step three, we have to determine developer. And when you determine developer, you determine it alone. You don't go, well, if I use that color, I'll use this developer. If I use that, I'll use this. First, we have to decide what it is we're doing. We have to determine what the developer tells us to do.

If I am just covering gray, if I'm just depositing color, it's ten volume. Now for all of the people who have been brainwashed over the years by bad education, it does not require twenty I I do not wanna lift the natural hair color.

I do not wanna lift her natural hair color, So I'm just depositing on the gray.

Let's put another footnote in there. If I did twenty volume for this gray coverage, now I am lightening her natural color, which I know is gonna pull warm, and I have to change my formula. I would only do that as if I was changing her natural color, which I am not. If I wanted to change the brown and cover the gray, now I have to determine what developer I'm doing. So if I was lifting this five to a six, I would use twenty volume.

But that's not what we're doing. We have to start getting more used to using ten volume for gray coverage. Ten volume works perfect.

Ten volume on certain textures is just gonna be deposit only permanent color. Ten vol volume on my hair actually lifts my hair. I have baby fine hair and I'll get a little lift out of ten volume on my hair. Ten volume on somebody else, really thick coarse hair might act like a demi, which it will cover, it just won't last.

So this really old school myth about twenty volume for gray coverage has to go away. It It has to go away. We have to get back to learning how to formulate hair color. So on step three, determining developer, I am just covering gray gray hair.

I'm just depositing. I'm gonna use ten volume. That's it.

We've we've got step three down.

It's the easiest step to do in formulation is just determine the developer.

Done.

Step four on, formulation, the four rules formulation.

Rule four is, am I enhancing or neutralizing? Meaning, if the goal was to lighten her hair and I was lifting her hair, lightening this brown, I know it's gonna pull warm. I'm either enhancing that warmth and working with it, or I'm trying to fight it, it, neutralizing it. And this is rule four of the four steps of formulation, enhance or neutralize.

Now remember, there's only four things we can do with hair color. We can lighten it lighten hair. We can darken hair. We can color hair with warm tones, and we can color hair with cool tones.

Why there's so many freaking colors out there is beyond me because you don't need it to get the job done. You you can have products, you can have tools that help you create whatever, type of color you want. If you want it to be a toner or deposit only, whatever, we have things to add to the bowl to do that. You don't have to buy all of those things.

And this takes us back to the very first thing that I said was, the less you know about how to formulate color, the more you're gonna spend. You're gonna spend a ton of money buying every conceivable thing that's out there because you don't know how to make it, you don't know how to do it.

And and this is a simple thing.

This is a more simple thing. We'll get into a couple more complicated as we do the videos. So this is just gray coverage. Right?

I I I determined that her natural was a five. She's got more gray than natural color. All she wants to do is cover it with her skin tone and her eye color. We definitely don't want this to be every single hair the same color.

We don't want an opaque finish and that's what that is.

We want a multi dimensional finish. So the color that I put on here, I want it to reflect the the natural and the light and the gray. So we have two or three different levels of brown in there. I determined that we are just depositing colors, so we're gonna use ten volume. And on this fourth step, are we enhancing or neutralizing?

Now, when you're depositing whether you you could be neutralizing a color. If it was red and you wanted it to be a different color, you're neutralizing.

But we're not. We're we're coloring gray here, so we're enhancing.

So on on this particular formula, I have two choices that I can do. I could put a level five on here because she's got so much white that that white hair is really gonna look more like a six when it's done. You'll see the two tone. You'll see darker and lighter browns running through here.

That's sort of the finish that I want. I don't want it to look like a wig or like a mannequin that every hair is the same color. It would suit her, her coloring, her eye color, all of that. Some clients, I do want that finish, but this one I don't.

I could use a level six hair color on here with ten volume. Now that means that all these white pieces are gonna look more like a seven next to the five. I personally think it's too much of a jump to have the multidimensional that I want it to have. I just want darker and medium brown colors in there, and I'm gonna just put a neutral five and ten volume on this head.

So when I wash it off and I can see all of the where the white pieces were because they're a level lighter, that's exactly the look I want. A lot of people mistake that as it didn't cover gray. No. It did cover gray.

It did exactly what I wanted it to do. I put a five on it, but now that hair is all those hairs are a six. Some dens it, but now that hair is all those hairs are a six. Some densities of hair, some fabric of hair, it's gonna look more like a seven depending on the hair.

But that is the look that I want.

I want it multi dimensional. I don't want it to look opaque. I want all the levels to show. Now, when I have my formula, my formula is five point o and ten volume for this section.

Now I'm gonna ask myself, okay, what if I don't get enough coverage? What if it's too light? What if this hair is like that and that five looks like a seven and it's too multi dimensional on her hair? That's easy because I can do it again.

But what if I do I jump the gun, I listen to all the blah blah twenty volume.

You know, I get more coverage. She doesn't like it. Not to mention the twenty volume is gonna affect her natural color. So in a couple weeks, as the color starts to fade, it's gonna pull warm and it's gonna fade brassy.

And now she's really unhappy. And let me tell you, that's the number one reason you're losing color counts right now. Number one reason you're losing color clients, gray coverage clients, is twenty volume because in two weeks, it pulls warm and fades brassy. And and that's exactly what we're trying to avoid.

So if I go if I jump the gun because I'm so worried about coverage and I'm so worried she's gonna complain about coverage, coverage, and and I go for it and do, you know, six point o and twenty volume, and she doesn't like that. How do you fix that? So we wanna do the things that what's the what's the better side of the situation for me to be on when I'm done and what is the easier thing to tweak or fix.

And doing five point zero or a five neutral in ten volume is the easiest way to go. It's the easiest thing to fix. I'm not messing with her natural hair. I can color it again to make it to make it darker or to get better opaque finish, or I can do a color remover and do it again. There's so many things that are easy. Those are easy things to do. But if I went for the Gusto on this just because I'm worried about somebody complaining about coverage, which a lot of them don't, you gotta have better conversations.

They seem multidimensional to them. It isn't a great coverage issue. It's a great coverage issue to most of us. Most of us expect every single hair to look the same color like this when you're done.

It's not. If you start with multidimensional, you're gonna end with multidimensional when you're done. So we wanna do the four steps. You wanna walk through them, match up where we are.

I don't care how many levels are in there. You gotta do it. Is it virgin or is it color treated? What level am I?

What tone?

What's the texture of the hair? Because that's gonna that's gonna change our formula.

And then where are we going? Really good consultation.

Understand the vision that you're trying to trying to achieve. Have a finish in mind. What are you trying to achieve? You can't do the same thing on everybody.

One size doesn't fit all. It's not gonna work, and you're gonna lose half your clients because it worked for half of them but not the other half. And you have no idea why you can't grow a clientele or keep them keep more of them in your chair and why so many of them leave. We have to so we do step one.

We do step two. We understand what developer we're doing and why we're doing it. We're following the rules.

This is a deposit only, so we're using ten volume.

With that, if she comes back and I noticed that, you know, she did get a little lift, that it is a little brassy when she comes back, that brown, her natural color had pulled a little bit, lifted a little bit, and it looks a little brassy. I might write on her card, next time I'm gonna use seven. Seven volume would work more as a deposit only on this air type versus ten. Somebody else.

I might find out that it didn't lift at all, but it didn't last. She told me that it faded pretty quickly. The ten volume faded, off of her hair. Well then, at that point, I might make a note, go up to fifteen.

I'm gonna go to fifteen before I go to twenty. The last thing I wanna do is mess with her natural color.

I'm just trying to cover gray.

This is why notes, following the steps, understanding what you're doing so then you can go back and troubleshoot.

Right? If I use the five point o, she said it was too dark, I can use six next time. So these are all the things instead of jumping to something else. I didn't get good coverage.

I'm switching color lines. I'm gonna use somebody else's five point o, and I'm gonna use a different line. Has nothing to do with all of those things. It's understanding hair color and how to formulate hair color, how to tweak and adjust a formula to get it perfect the way you want.

That's what this is all about. And we really have to understand that I am overwhelmed by the amount of people I see on social media who are asking formulation questions. This is insane to me. Well, in my opinion, you get out of hairdressing school, you should be able to do the four steps of formulation and be able to do color.

And it seems like people are coming out, the other way they're learning this is somebody recommends a toner.

One toner on five different people is gonna look five five different things. You have to be able to formulate it.

That was this particular section.

We're gonna talk more. We're gonna go into some more formulation for for the other ones. But it is imperative that you understand how to do this. This makes you stronger in your in in your particular profession of coloring coloring, if that's what you wanna do, being a colorist.

You are not held hostage to a brand because you don't know how to use another one. No matter what color line you have in your back room, you are gonna do the same exact thing, and you're matching it up to the book that they have. You have to be able to formulate. This gives you the freedom to get a color line that's cost effective, that you put more money in your pocket, you're not having to ask online or anybody else what you think went wrong or what to do.

This is what's going to break the chains, give you the freedom to be the colors that you always wanted to be, and make some money doing it instead of being color broke and just throwing anything on here that you can to do it.

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