Application is nine tenths of the law. I mean, if we put out, you know, a class for color application, nobody would come yet, you know, everybody I know needs it. It was the number one reason most people failed the American Board of Certified Colorist test. They might know all the answers, but they don't know how to put the stuff on.

So I I'm with you there. But I just also wanna give you a little tidbit. I've been, you know, reading depositions and I'm working on a case right now. And, very interesting that, you know, a client came in and they were using lightener on her and they the salon burnt her.

The hairdresser burnt her. She got burnt.

This wasn't her first time having lightener. She's been to, you know, salon a few times having having her hair highlighted. But this time she got burnt.

Now the problem was this, they had the salon had Malibu, had classes in Malibu, understood that you're supposed to demineralize everybody's hair, you know, that what can happen if you don't when you put lightener on. So she was taught it and knew that it was right but didn't wanna change her behavior.

Didn't wanna change her schedule.

Didn't know how to, you know, get up to thirty thousand feet and look down at what she was doing. And this girl ended up subsequently with a second degree burn. It's been a year into it. She's had three surgeries.

She will be scarred for life because somebody didn't wanna understand you need to wash hair first.

So I don't really care about anything else other than that. I just watched a I just read a two hundred page deposition of the girl that got burnt and what she's going through and the nerve damage and the pain of of constantly because a hairdresser was taught what to do but chose, you know what, it's not gonna happen to me. It's not gonna be me. I'm gonna do it this way. This is the way I've always done it without going, I need to do this. So it was so painful for me to read it.

And, and and, of course, I I'm teaching this to all of you trying to go look at doesn't matter what the trend is, doesn't matter what anything is going on.

If you're gonna put lightener on someone's hair, you need to do a Gepierre treatment. The only thing I can tell you is develop a new habit.

Anything you do for thirty days becomes habit. So So if you start doing a clarifying treatment on everybody for thirty days before you start working on them, then that becomes your new normal.

Right? So we can develop good habits just as easily as we develop bad ones.

And, we've had too many years of throwing color and lightener on dirty dry hair that that's too much of a bad habit that needs to change.

So we need to start washing hair before we put color on it. No one a painter wouldn't even paint a wall that was dirty.

So I have a quick question about that.

Yes. I work in two different cities and one is New York City, and the water doesn't seem to be as bad. It's where I work elsewhere.

Is clarifying is the clarifying shampoo okay to do instead of demineralizing when you're working with water that isn't didn't have a bunch of minerals in it?

Okay.

I alright. Listen. I hear you. You don't know what's happening in your clients' lives. Do they shampoo at a gym? Do they sleep at their boyfriend's house? Do they go away for the weekend?

Did they travel recently? So look at this is this is in in a perfect world, you would do a demineralizing treatment prior to every lightener that you did, which is a lot because forty percent of what you do in the salons is blondes.

That's a perfect world. It's not a perfect world. So this is what I recommend. I recommend that quarterly, you do a demineralizing treatment.

And this is the perfect time of year. Really listen to me, guys. This this works. I've done it in salons.

I've been doing this for so long. Come the first of the year after after New Year's. You know, look at new year, new everything. Let's get your hair clean.

Like, everybody gets a demineralizing treatment. All your clients, not just your color ones. Because your hair feels better. The shampoos and conditioners will work better.

Even a haircut will feel and perform better when the hair is clean and you get all the shit out of it. So get everybody on a quarterly treatment. Right? Start everybody in January, then come April, everybody gets another, you know, demineralizing treatment.

In between, every client you have that has hair on their head should have a good clarifying shampoo at home that they do once a week, sometimes twice a week depending on, you know, do they swim in a pool or, you you know, do they have bad water? So once or twice a week for a good clarifying shampoo at home and when they come into the salon that day for for a color, you can do a good clarifying shampoo at the sink.

As long as you're doing treatment quarterly, they're doing it trying to keep up with it at home weekly, you should be good.

But you are never gonna cheat yourself out of trying to do hair the right way, trying to do color the right way. So there are no shortcuts here. You're either gonna do it right or you wanna cheat and go fast and be a hair diner.

Stop. Take a deep breath.

Right? When come the first of the year, clients come in, book them the right way.

We're gonna do a clarifying shampoo and conditioner, then we cut them. By the time we're done cutting them, the hair is damp. We apply either the color or the lightener at that point.

We process.

Use heat, medium heat, whether it's a dryer or a steamer or a rollerball.

It'll cut your processing time in half.

Take them to the sink, We rinse them as cool as with cool water as possible.

Conditioner, if you want to shampoo at that point, you shampoo after the conditioner. You always shampoo out lightener because lightener is not color. It's a chemical we're trying to remove from the hair.

And we're done.

That is the proper way chemically to do color. We're not putting color on dirty dry hair any more, birth control pills, cold and flu medication and every other damn thing. If you're gonna be serious, do it right.

It it just takes change in behavior.

It's no different than if you wanted to lose ten pounds, you gotta change your behavior to have the best result. If you wanna have the best hair results, you have to change your behavior.

And this girl too, her water wasn't bad at home, but she has was, had stayed at her sister's. Her sister moved into a new house. She went over to the new house. She was there for like three, four days helping her sister unpack and move into her house. And her sister had crazy hard water. Boom, she goes to the salon and she has second degree burns.

We're gonna do it right or we're not.

You wanna have the best results or you don't.

This is this is where we are. I muted you guys, so if anybody has a question because I was getting some little background. Somebody had something going on at their house, so I muted it. But if you have any questions or anything or comments or contributions, you can just unmute and and chime right in.

How's everybody doing?

Going over, color correction?

We are. We absolutely are. And we're gonna start that right now. So thanks for the queue in, Teresa.

Because we we're we're gonna do formulation today.

And I I really want everybody to, embrace this.

This is where the marketing screws us up, sways our thought process. We start making decisions from here instead of here.

The four steps of formulation works for every single hair color line. They're all made the same. They all work the same. The only thing different is the shades and selection, of them. They're they're whether they have, you know, coconut oil or whatever.

The four steps of formulation works the same for everybody. And as soon as you master that, then you can master every single color line. Then there's never a reason to be held hostage to marketing or held hostage that you think I can't change because I don't know how to formulate that. I just figured out how to make that thing work and now you want me to figure out how this thing works.

The chemist came up with these four steps that if followed if followed correctly, it'll keep you in the best position possible.

Right? You will be just light of your goal, just slightly dark of your goal, just slightly warm of your goal or slightly cool of your goal, and it takes a tweak of a formula, just a tweak to get it smack on. When you don't know how to formulate and you're going all over the place, this is why you need corrective color. Corrective color is nothing more than the four steps of formulation, only you're doing hair color on something that's undesirable or not the color that you wanted. It's the only difference, but we are gonna do it to death today.

Because if if you switch color lines, and let's just say we are, I want everyone to experience or feel switching a color line seamlessly without without anything. If there's anything else going on other than switching a color seamlessly, either brainwashed on on the bullshit in the marketing, it's all it's all bullshit at that point. Because a good colorist can go line to line to line and be able to formulate and and do seamless color.

That's it. What happens is, someone will switch a color line and they follow the formula they were using with the old color.

The problem with that is that six n might be a half a shade darker than this six n. So if you just follow the formula, it's not gonna work so well.

So we have to be able to reformulate as you should be on everybody regularly too. Because there is a big difference between a hairdresser that puts on hair color and a colorist.

Right? So when a client comes in and sits down in the chair, maybe it's her first time.

You have no idea what color's in her hair. You have no idea what the formula was that the last hairdresser used on her, and she's coming in to get her hair colored. What do you do?

How do you do that?

Do you guess at what color it is?

Anybody?

It happens to you all the time.

You have somebody walk in with co You start fresh.

You start fresh. Right? Yes.

You you don't guess what color it is.

Right? You have to know what her natural color is and you have to know what the color is here so you can do her hair, so you can formulate it.

You're gonna you're gonna do that every single time. I mean, every time you go and approach a client, whether you've been doing her hair for four years or four months or four minutes, you know, you should always be assessing her color. Like, you know, take taking the swatch book.

Right? Taking your swatch book and, just to just to see if it's faded, how much it's faded.

Right?

This is where we lose our clients. This is why we don't have high retention on first time clients.

We approach it too much like a hairdresser, and we don't think enough like a client.

We guess. We get nervous. We say all sorts of things that we shouldn't. We make promises that we shouldn't.

And and we we have to be able to just look at it as a colorist who understands formulation, be able to match that color and do it. Again, I'm gonna give the analogy again.

If you go to Home Depot or Lowe's and you go to the paint department, there's ten thousand shades and swatches of color on those walls for you to choose from.

And they don't stock every single one of those colors. You pick a color that you want, you take it up to the desk, they put a white can of paint underneath, They punch in a formula. Two or three colors shoot out of a thing. They shake it up and you have your color. But that's who we are.

That's who we are. We're supposed to do the formula and we can achieve any color. That's why you don't need a permanent line and a demi permanent line and a this line and a that line. You have all of it there. You just need to learn how to do this.

Punch in the formula.

So we're gonna walk through the four steps of formulation and we're gonna do it for brown, for red, for blonde, for correction, so so we understand. Now these are the four rules of formulation and every hair color company teaches you the same four rules.

The problem is nobody follows the rules.

And you can't break the rules, change the rules and play with the rules till you even know how the rules work and most of us don't.

It's pretty obvious online when you see the things that people say and ask and and even asking for formulation or what toners that they absolutely have no idea what is going on and and how to formulate color.

So I think, you know, when you when you switch to a new color line, it was funny because I was down Cape Cod last week and and doing this with the salon.

They called me. They had switched color lines.

And all of a sudden, they were noticing everything. Right? Well, it's not covering. It's like this.

It's I said, it is this actually, the same exact thing you've been doing all along. The fact that you switched color lines and they felt like their pants were down around their ankles and they were paying attention more to what they were doing is why they were noticing things that were there all along, that they just weren't we get too comfortable. Right? You grab the six n and the twenty volume.

You've been doing it. You look at the girl's card. Mary Smith, she's six n and twenty volume. And every time she comes in for the last year, same, same, same, same, same, same.

You are now a hairdresser that puts on hair color and not a colorist.

Right? So all of a sudden you switch color lines and then you start paying attention. Oh, is this faded? You know, would you prefer if it was a little darker or a little lighter? What you know, what then you start having conversations cause you're using a color line and you don't know if it's a half a shade lighter or a half a shade darker. So you start saying all these crazy things and all of a sudden you start having a color conversation with a client that you've been doing for a year.

It's a good thing. They wanna talk about it.

Sometimes you get the color mixed up in the bowl while she's pulling in the driveway. That's that's not how that's not how professionals work.

So we need to do this the right way.

So we're gonna do, fierce formulation. Everybody ready?

Give me a thumbs up if you're ready to do this. Okay? Because we gotta we gotta bang out some pretty bad formulation things that are happening.

So we're gonna start with step one. Right? There's four rules and this is the first one. What is that rule? Everybody chime in. You can actually unmute yourselves too because this is going to be a back and forth conversation about formulation.

So you can unmute. What is the first step or first rule of formulation? Anybody?

Consultation, assessing what needs to be done.

Okay. A little bit more specific. That's correct. But can we get a little bit more specific?

Well, once you know where the client, wants to go with APNIC, take a look at her roofs, figure how much percentage of gray, figure where you're going to.

That's right.

Take you to get there.

Okay. Prior to GPS that we could plug in a address and it'll take us there. Prior to that, we had MapQuest.

Right?

And so you put in the address of where you are, where you're starting from and you put the address and where you're going and it will spit out directions.

That's exactly what hair color formulation is about. And step one is, where are you?

Where are you? The not just the the level, not just her roots, everything.

Somebody's got some sort of noise.

It's Laurie.

Laurie?

Is it you, honey?

You yes. It was you, Laurie. Some sort of background noise that was going on. So not not just, you know, just not just her natural and her it's everything.

Right? In MapQuest, you have to put the number of the street, the street name, the town, the state and you have to have everything. So step one is where am I? Where am I?

Where am I starting from?

Now now pay attention.

Number one, this very first thing that we do, a lot of us pooh pooh it, we guess, you know, you you're ten feet away from the chair, you look over, she's a five.

We look at the gray, but really do we go she's more salt than pepper or more pepper than salt? What is the percentage? Am I formulating for the white or am I formulating for her natural?

A lot of us aren't taking the time. Let me tell you. If if whatever you decide, number one is, right, Can you guys see that?

Can you see it?

Yeah? Right.

You decide this is what it is.

If this is It says five n.

Right? You go, she's a five n. This is what you think you're starting with.

If this is wrong, everything you do after this is wrong.

Be right.

If you are not hold whatever is whatever color line you you are using, if you are not holding a swatch book up to that head to find her natural color and to find whatever hair was colored. If you're not doing this, you're guessing and half the time you're wrong.

Not to mention, when we decide which way we're going, right? Should she be a should she be an ash brown? Should she be a cool brown or a warm brown? That's all what colorists do. Right? We just don't smash six n and twenty volume on everybody's hair. That's that's for supercuts.

That is for hairdressers who put on hair color.

Alright. But we need to know where we are. What is her natural? You have to match it up. Now, there is no such thing as a five and a half.

If you're if you have a swatch book and you're five six five six five six, what do you do? Anybody? If you can't decide, you're going, oh, I can't really tell if she's a five or a six. What do you do for formulation at that point?

Anybody?

Always.

You always formulate to the darker color.

It'll always keep you on the better side of the situation.

So five six five six can't decide, you formulate to a five. You have to do percentage of gray.

Texture.

Right? Is it baby fine? Is it medium? Is it coarse?

All of these things have to be done here before you move on.

All of them.

You have to know where you are.

So you can decide where you're going.

Step two is where am I going?

Where are you gonna go? What what do we which color are we trying to achieve here? This is consultation.

This is using swatch books, pictures, anything you can do because it's very difficult to verbalize color.

Right? She shows you a picture, but what she sees and what I see are two totally different colors. I'm gonna have her pick out a swatch that looks as close to that picture as she thinks because she's gonna go, oh it looks like this swatch. You're gonna in your mind you're gonna go, oh no it doesn't. But that's what she sees.

Plus then you have to do is it gonna look good on her? Because she might like the picture but then you put the color on her and it doesn't look right. Then she says that you did the color wrong.

So use every every tool you can for consultation. This is just to have it standing there behind the chair having a conversation with her. And you never have a consultation standing behind the chair anyways. You stand in front of her.

You stand in front of her and have a conversation. And you look at pictures and you use swatches. You show her her natural color. You show her her natural. I I show her the five.

I show her the five. Oh my god. My hair is that dark. I can't believe it. Now listen. Yes, it grows out of the scalp that dark.

But sun and wear and tear, it fades. Your hair is a whole level lighter on the ends than it is at the root. But if I'm doing a blonde on this girl and I'm going light, I'm going like a level nine, ten, she's gotta know that that dark root is gonna come in next to that, and we're making her next appointment. She's gonna see that in three to four weeks.

You're gonna be here in four in here in four to five weeks. I don't do desperate dot. You don't call me last minute going I need my roots done. We will have an appointment set for you because that's gonna look dark.

And this is what clients say. It just keeps growing darker and darker and faster and faster. No. The blonde keeps getting lighter and lighter, so the contrast between that five n comes in faster and more drastic.

And these are conversations that you have. You think it's just all so everybody knows what this is? They don't.

You're explaining to them exactly what they're gonna see so when they see it, they're not complaining to you.

Is everybody with me on this?

Because we're gonna do a blonde.

Right? And then I say to her, do you see the difference? Do you understand the regrowth situation you're gonna have in a few weeks? So it's dark. Sometimes they're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't go so light. That's okay. That gives me an idea where her head is.

Right? Some of them go, oh, I don't care. I, you know, go light light, I don't care. Great.

Cha ching, cha ching on that one.

She's coming in more often. So we have to have an idea of exactly where we are. What is her what is her natural color, what is the colored hair's level and tone, it might be a six red.

It could be an eight copper.

You have to know what the natural is, what the existing is, the texture, the percentage of gray, everything, and then we decide where we're gonna go. I'm gonna tell you right now guys.

Nine n is the most commonly picked color for blondes.

That's why nine v is the most widely used toner, which is stupid because you don't need a nine v toner when you're doing this stuff.

Everybody picks nine n across the board because in the consumer's position, ten is too light, but eight isn't light enough. And I like that beige champagne y sandy looking color that I want that one. And I have so much red in my hair.

I have so much red in my hair. I was, you know, a toe head till I was sixteen.

Okay. Well, that's not where we are because I'm coloring your hair today and today you're a five and we're going to a nine. And she doesn't want any warmth.

Now that not wanting any warmth thing differs between a summer and a spring that we did last time when we were in there, right? So you have to be able to look at her and understand how violent she may be over warmth.

Because even a summer will think nine n is warm.

So we have to look at her, understand what she's saying and what she wants, picturing that on her head going, she doesn't she we need to be a little bit cooler for her because she's gonna complain where you look at this one and go, nine n's gonna be beautiful on her. Do you understand?

You're not supposed to just bleach and tone everybody.

And that's what everybody's doing.

They're they're bleaching and toning everybody.

So she wants to be nine n. She doesn't want any warmth. It's okay if it gets a little bit lighter because if I make her a nine n, that nine n is gonna fade and she's gonna be a ten in a very short period of time.

Is everybody with me? Nod if you understand where we are and what we're doing. Okay?

So we find out we take the time, use your swatch book. How you do this? You slide the swatch book into their hair backwards. That's why I like swatch books like this.

Because you slide it in. If you can see where that swatch starts and stops, you're wrong.

If it blends in completely and you can't see where it starts and stops, you're right on. And if they don't match up to an end, you gotta use whatever tone you have to find the level because tone throws off level.

Right? A six ash looks darker than a six n. And a six gold looks lighter than a six n. Is everybody with me?

Everybody understand? So you have to use whatever tone necessary to get her level and tone.

Percentage of gray, you have to work that out.

And it's only for formulation purposes.

Not all gray hair is resistant. She wants to be nine n. She doesn't want any warmth in her hair. So we know where we are and we know where we're going.

Is everybody with me?

Mhmm.

Okay.

Third step, third rule.

Are you lifting or are you depositing?

What are you doing here? Everybody on mute, please, so we can talk about this. This is a big deal.

We're lifting. Everybody on mute. Let's go because we're gonna we're gonna fix the formulation issues. We're lifting. Everybody understands what lifting is. Right?

We're lightning here. Right? Everybody understands this. Please nod at me if you're on. Just don't have your camera on. Please tell me what it is. Okay.

So we're lifting. We have two choices here. We're lifting or we're depositing. She's a five, she wants to go to a nine, we're lifting.

Right. How many levels are we lifting?

You can just hold up your hand if you want to. Four.

Four. Four.

Yeah. Four shakes.

Four. Anybody else? Bev, Susan, how many levels we lift in here?

Well, I know you're saying FUBER is gonna end up being five because I think it's a little bit more getting better.

What? You think it's five, Bev? Yep.

Theresa I mean, Susan, you think it's five?

Mhmm. Okay. Five is correct. This is not four levels of lift.

That's old school.

This is why everybody bleaches and tones.

Everybody bleaches and tones because they don't know how to formulate.

They don't know how to do a blonde with color because they don't know how to formulate.

This is five levels of lift. Pay attention. This is gonna change your life behind the chair in doing hair color.

Alright. A hundred years ago, we always said count the bottle of color as a level of lift.

And in school you were taught that. Count the count the bottle. So when you're doing this you go six, seven, eight, nine.

Right?

Okay. So let's go back. You're telling me that I'm going from a five to a six with ten volume?

You went six thinking I got from a five to a six with ten volume.

Does that work?

No.

No.

I might on a couple.

Let's let's walk it out this way.

If somebody's a level five and they wanna be a nine, Alright. Let's let's do this. If she's a level five and wanted to stay a level five, we just wanna switch color. What developer do you use?

Ten.

Ten. If she wants to be a six.

Twenty five.

She wants to be a seven.

Thirty. Thirty.

She wants to be an eight.

Forty. Forty.

She wants to be a nine.

Bleach. No.

No. If she wants to be a nine, how many levels of lift is that?

Five. Five.

It's five levels of lift. Now on my hair, that could work because I my hair will lift with ten volume. So you could actually get me four and a half, five levels with forty volume. So on sometimes when you did it, it works.

Most of the time, it doesn't, which is why you bleach and tone.

Now, if I only lift her to an eight, but the color I put in the bowl is a nine, the darker color always dominates the end result. The eight will dominate the end result. She's not light enough, she's brassy, and she's pissed.

Are you with me? Yes. Cleaning out the hair, demineralizing it first will help in your lift. It's not fighting through all the shit.

It's good for blondes. Is everybody with me?

You need to know how to formulate to do to do this sort of work.

And we're making a better educated guess is all we're doing. Understanding this and doing exactly what this tells you to do and having a few tools to carry it out, it's still an educated guess because you'll get five levels of lift, forty volume. On me, you might get five levels of lift. On somebody else, you're gonna get four levels of lift and forty volume on some hair will only lift three.

But this is what happens. You do the same thing on everybody. You do this formula with nine a and forty volume as nine ten thousand hairdressers are doing as we speak. Can't figure out why it doesn't work.

And it's gonna work completely different on every head of hair that you do, which is why you have to go back to number one. What was the texture? Was it baby fine? Was it thick and coarse?

Can I do this with color or do I have to jump to lightener?

So how do we get fifty percent, volume?

Fifty volume is of fifty a fifty volume is available at every beauty supply store you go to. It's at CosmoProf. It's at SalonCentrix. It's at Sally's. This is how fucking poor our education is.

Fifty has been around forever.

Now I have a choice here. Right? If I am lifting five levels, which is what this is. I'm going from a five to nine.

I'm lifting five levels. I have options to lift five levels. I can use forty volume and extra blonding cream. Do you all have extra blonding cream?

Everybody does except for Wella. Every color company makes it except foella.

I don't know. They might have one now now that they've been bought and beaten. I don't know if they've gotten one. But you get a good extra blending cream that you can use with any color line.

Alright? Check check Chromastics. He's got a great one.

Super.

He has a regular one and a super one. It's awesome for stuff like this. But I can use forty volume and extra blending cream to get me five levels of lift.

I can use fifty volume.

I can use fifty volume. It's awesome.

Considering that forty percent of the work we do in salons is blondes, We need a wider vocabulary. We need a bigger vocabulary to achieve blondes instead of bleach twenty volume and a nine v toner glaze that I can spot in a mall at a hundred paces.

It it's nothing special.

Ain't nothing special doing that shit.

Right?

Louise, can I ask you something?

Sure.

Okay. Now yeah. I and you you're more much more knowledgeable than me. So that when you're using high lift tint, you know, and we've got them.

And when I use I'm just asking you this. I use high lift tint ninety percent of the time rather than bleach.

But when you use high lift tint, it won't show on previously colored hair. You know, It just kept you you almost put it on. You go, what the hell? That didn't Yeah.

Color doesn't color doesn't lift color. No. No. It doesn't. Right.

So so I'm saying this. So I I know probably that this is odd, but I say to my clients, well, you know, if you want something that's going to be there forever, we're going to we'll need to grow some of this out so we can start again. Otherwise, the only Okay.

Okay. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait. Hold on. This is where this is where the four steps of formulation go right down the fucking toilet.

Focus.

Focus. Stay with me.

Me. Color cannot lift color. I can I can budge color colored hair like mine? I can lift it a level or two with, you know, an extra blonding cream.

That's what extra blonding cream is for. It'll give you up to an extra level of lift. On some people like me, you might get two. On some people, one.

On some people, a half a level depending on their fabric.

Alright. So I can budge a little. If it's previously colored and she wants a nine, I have to use bleach.

I have to.

I have to to lighten it.

My argument to to that is what when now I'm just are you the you're the expert? Yeah. This is the question I've always wanted answered.

Yes.

Is this is done and people put bleach on it. Right?

Yeah.

And they get it down to a shitty ass, you know, orange, yellow, whatever tone they people wanna say it is.

Right.

And then you put a then you put a toner over top to bring it up.

No. No. No. No. You you lost me.

So they'll bring it down.

Yeah.

The they're gonna put bleach on their colored hair like mine. Mhmm. Get it up to, like, dark yellow or orange yellow color. Right? And then you put a color on top of it, not necessarily a toner, but you color to get rid of the orange.

Mhmm. Right? Now where are we?

Now what what I'm saying is so you when when you are talking ninety percent to women today well, women I talk to and the men, They don't want as much they want as little regrowth noticeably as possible.

So when you put one color on hair, one, you know, you're gonna get a stunt line relatively quickly. And so, yes, they come in all the time. But then you get this incredible you see it all the time.

These incredible demarcation lines because the color that you when you put the bleach on this to get it down, and then they've got the the I don't understand get it down.

Put bleach on it to get it up. Bleach only takes things up.

You know, get it up. Right.

When you do that, when you get it up.

Yeah. Right? And then then you go and put the other color on to get it as close to the color that they want. Right. Inevitably, that fades.

Okay. You you're right. It does. That's why we're okay. If it's already colored and she wants this color, I have to bleach it and color it.

Mhmm. I have to. There's no other way to get it because it's colored. You can do a strand test with a a high lift and extra blondening cream, try to lift her up a few levels.

But if she's previously colored, I have to and she wants to be that color, I have to bleach and tone it. Now there's nothing wrong with that as long as you are, you know, demineralizing and conditioning it first and taking care of it all the way through. There's nothing wrong with that. I can still do that and achieve it, but you still need to know how to formulate.

Because if she comes in if she comes in and she's blonde already and she's got like a little bit of regrowth, I'm starting that regrowth off with color. I'm not overlapping her ends because she's already blonde.

I don't have to go in and bleach. I can match up her natural color. Go, she's a five.

I want her I want it to be a nine. I can do that with color. I don't have to bleach it. And that way, I'm not compromising the hair as much. It's not gonna be as damaged.

I I can do it with color, but we don't know how to do it with color. There's so much bleach juice because nobody knows how to formulate. And and eighty percent of the hairdressers out there still think this is a four lift situation. Eighty percent of the hairdressers would be faced with this and use forty volume, and two thirds of the time they're gonna be wrong.

This is why we grab bleach.

You can do five, six levels of lift with hair color and it's the hair's in better condition, you have a bigger array of shades to choose from, It won't fade as fast because we're not bleaching it and then putting a color on top and making it porous so the color on top comes out. For every single reason, it's better to do blondes as much as we can with color. The problem is nobody knows how to do it because they don't know how to formulate.

Is everybody with me?

Yeah.

Thanks, Susan. Do you ever have I've had this problem before and I don't know why where I've used blonding cream in with, a high lift color and it it it kinda wants to blow out of the, foil.

It swells?

Yes.

It if it's swelling, it's because there's something in the hair. It's got nothing to do with the color. You need to do a demineralizing treatment. Okay.

It's got nothing to do with that. And and it depends on how fat flat you make your foils. Some people pat them or crease them. Don't ever do that.

I mean, it needs air. You you got a good amount of ammonia in that formula. Not that that's bad, but it needs some air. So it should swell a bit, but it should not get hot to the touch or leak out or swell up like a balloon.

That just means she needs a demineralizing treatment.

And how about the amount of blinding cream do you use within that formula?

Well, the maximum would be, you know, an ounce of color, an ounce of extra blending cream. And small and smaller amounts, you know, if you use extra blending cream like, you know, you do like an inch on the bottom of the bowl like toothpaste on a toothpick. You just do an inch. It'll give better gray coverage. Red's a kick.

You can do nice fun things by giving your color a kick by using small amounts of that. The more you increase the extra blonding cream, the more it assists in giving you an extra level of lift. So in a formula like that, it would be, whatever color you're gonna use equal amounts of extra blending cream and then the correct amount of developer.

In the five to nine.

In the five to in a five to nine situation.

Right? But we need to know how to formulate.

You you can't fix it. You can't jump over it. You can't jump around it. You can't do anything unless you know how to do this.

How do you fix color? See, right here, we we went back. Right? Because this is five levels of lift.

Right? Pay attention.

If this was wrong, right, if she was really a four, but you guessed five and you used forty volume, you're really screwed.

Right? If she was really a six but you were playing it safe, you're like, you know what? I'm gonna formula five, six. I don't know. I'm gonna I'm gonna formulate it to a five. She's really a six but you played it safe and you used forty volume. It would probably work.

Right? Because she's really a six and that is four levels of lift.

And this is why you have to make a good educated guess. You always formulate to the darker color here. If one is wrong, three is automatically wrong.

But if one is right and three is wrong, your whole formula screwed up. This is why.

Out of forty percent of the work being done in salons as blondes, ninety five percent of it is with bleach in twenty volume. It doesn't even make any sense.

I you wouldn't put bleach in twenty volume on me.

My hair is so fragile. Right? I mean, you would have to if that's what I wanted.

But, you know, bleach in ten volume lifts hair.

And Chewbacca's mother, it might be bleach in thirty volume. Everybody's doing the same cookie cutter carve out whether they're working on cotton, wool, or corduroy And and expecting to get results and don't have no idea why when something happens, why it happened.

But you need to know how to formulate.

She's a five. She wants to be a nine. This is five levels of lift. I have options.

I have options for five levels of lift. I can use I can use, color and extra blonding cream to get me five levels of lift.

Some hair it's gonna work easier.

Real resistant hair or course hair, maybe not. I also have fifty volume. Right? I can use fifty volume in my formula, to get me five levels of lift.

And for fine hair and medium hair, it's a great choice. Right? Always do a strand test. You know, Chewbacca's mother, maybe not. Maybe five levels of lift. Fifty volume only gets me four on Chewbacca's mother. Is everybody understanding what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yes.

Alright. The these are the four rules of formulation. And the rule is you follow the rules.

That's the rule.

If you're jumping all over the place, you don't know what's working and what isn't. You can't fix it. You can't create new things unless you understand what you're doing.

And just for just for formulation sake, I'm gonna I'm gonna go fifty volume here.

Just so we can talk about formula a little bit. Right?

Can I ask you Yeah?

Ask away. That's why we're here.

If, if you were doing on scalp, lightning, what's the highest level of, peroxide?

Whatever she can take.

I mean, whatever she can take. I mean, we put fifty volume is a thousand times more gentle than bleach.

And we put and we put bleach on the scalp. Right?

Mhmm.

Alright. I'd rather go the fifty volume any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays. It's more gentle.

And I can control it when you can't control bleach. Right?

If she can say I mean, you put twenty volume on some people's scalps and they're miserable.

And then you got, you know, bleach in twenty volume. I mean, I just did it on my nephew. I totally bleached out my nephew.

Right? And I had bleached in twenty volume on his scalp and he just sat there eating an apple. Somebody else would be climbing the walls and it was you know, bugging them. So you do what you can.

That's why we do strand tests. That's why we do patch tests. That's why we do it here. Tell me how it feels.

That's why we act like professionals.

Enough that every single person is gonna react the same and do the same. You're gonna act like a professional. We put serious chemicals on people's hair and they can have serious consequences. And let me tell you, I see the serious consequences of what we do. You, I would never put bleach or a fifty volume formula on on someone's scalp that wasn't demineralized.

God forbid that there was something in that hair. Right? I I would never do it.

But this is an option. We have sixty volume here too. I have fifty and sixty we carry at coastline because blondes are forty percent of what we do.

And we need more tools and we need a bigger vocabulary to achieve beautiful blondes without bleach.

And it can be done.

The only other thing you need is a good color line that goes with that. Brandy, do you have a question, honey?

I do have a question. Yes.

Back in the day when I started doing hair and they were doing bleach and tongs with one I worked at, they would use sweet and low.

And I figured you would say no. I didn't I hadn't used it because I don't do bleach and tons. But I'm just curious about the, like, when someone says they hurt their scalp, is there anything new, or is it just like, well, you need to take it or you can't?

Yeah.

There's Look at demineralize it.

Alright.

Look at sweet and low won't work in bleach, so I don't know what the fuck they were doing there. That just blows my mind. Alright.

Sweet N' Low has a natural desensitizer in it. It works a little bit when you put it in color for gray coverage.

The problem is you don't wanna mask any discomfort.

Alright. It it could be the fact that she has something in her hair that's causing a reaction that's causing that. So maybe if we demineralize first, her hair is slightly damp.

We do good application. Don't color her scalp, color her hair.

Right? We can avoid a lot of these things. Sometimes you can, after you've clarified it and conditioned it, with a with a tint bottle. Right?

With a tint bottle, you can go through the hair with a tint bottle. Put oil in it. Go through and just a light, light, skimming oil over her scalp. You put the color on top of that, so there's a buffer.

Which is the whole thing that they taught us a hundred years ago. Oh, have them wait three days. The dirtier, the better. It would it it would build oil up on their scalp to cause a buffer so they didn't feel burnt. The colors we used back then were way stronger than what we have now. Sometimes it's just a pH thing, honey.

Right? It's it's a pH thing.

Our skin is four point five to five point five. If somebody is using high pH products at home every day and literally washing off their acid mantle and you put color of bleach on it, they're gonna feel super sensitive. So right off the bat, we want product lines that are four point five to five point five to maintain everybody's acid mantle.

If their acid mantle is intact and you put a color on their hair that's like a pH of nine or ten, right? It not only swells your cuticle, but it stretches your skin. And if you've ever had an Indian burn as a kid, right, somebody twists twists your skin one way and with one hand and the other the other way. It feels itchy and burny because you stretched the skin fast. So sometimes that happened, especially this time of year when it's cold and damp. People come in and their scalp is cold and damp or dry, cold and dry and you put color on that and it starts stretching their dry, tight skin to adjust to that new pH. They feel bitchy, you know, a little itchy and burny.

Is everybody with me? This is why we wash first with warm water and we condition because conditioners are acidic that will help the skin, right?

Bringing it back down to its acidic state where it should be.

The skin is warm and damp.

So when you put a high pH chemical on the skin, it's gonna stretch and adjust a little bit easier.

Is everybody with me?

Mhmm.

Now didn't you say before you could, put a half an ounce of, conditioner in the color?

You could. You could add conditioner to your color to lower it lower the pH a little bit. Mhmm. That would be that would be easier on her scalp.

Absolutely, you can do that. You can do it with bleach too. You can absolutely do it with bleach. All of these things work but you can't make the decision to do any of these things until you understand how to formulate and what you're gonna do.

You can't do any of these things until you understand what you're doing.

And unfortunately, even hairdressers who have been doing this twenty, thirty years still don't know how to formulate. They're still doing the old school, you know, five to nine, six, seven, eight, nine. I can't believe that it's it's still being taught or that people still think that that's happening. Everybody's selling you so much bullshit and nobody's teaching us a goddamn thing.

People are spending five dollar over five dollars an ounce on all these expensive colors like Goldwell and Wella and they don't even know how to formulate.

It's so fucked up.

If we just know how to do this, you can work with any color. You get a good cost effective one. Everything's better because you know what the hell you're doing.

Every color works. There isn't a hair color line out there that doesn't work. What doesn't work is the hairdresser.

Yes.

And you can save a lot of money and put a lot of money in your pocket doing it smarter and being educated in how to do this. So, going back to this, she's a five. She wants to be a nine. That's five levels. You always start counting at the level that they're at. Five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Now in bleach, so you understand what this means. When we bleach and tone, right, we lift past the goal, right? She's a five. We lift her past the nine, and then we put a toner on.

Now the toner becomes the darker part of the of the situation. The toner is now darker than her natural hair, so the toner dominates the end result. Do you have to change my mic? Okay.

Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Mhmm. So when we're coloring here and you do it wrong, if you're coloring a blonde and you lift her to an eight but you use a level nine color, the eight is darker than the nine. The eight dominates the end result. It's not light enough. It's brassy and she's pissed.

But when we bleach and tone, we lift her through the nine, the toner now comes in as the darker part and dominates the end result so you guys can get whatever you want. Does this make sense?

Okay. Why can't we do that with color?

We can do the same thing with color if you understand what's happening, right? So she's a five.

She wants to be a nine.

Now a third of the time, you use fifty volume in this formula, if it was me, somebody with baby fine hair or or medium hair, that fifty volume is gonna get you six levels of lift.

So you're actually lifting past the nine.

The whatever color you You're talking about virgin hair though.

Yes. We have to.

Relation for virgin hair.

Yes. Every month she comes in, she has virgin hair at her root. Right?

Right.

Okay. So you either gonna keep going with the bleach or you're gonna start coloring it.

Do you see what I'm saying to you?

Yes.

Especially in your world Teresa, you would much rather be able to achieve blondes with color. Yes?

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, bleach in your world is like the devil.

It just sucks. Right? So, although your hair can handle it better, but not with perms or, you know, lye or anything like that. It really limits what what you can do, but you can do it.

And even in, in your world is the texture issue becomes everything in your world. Where in the Caucasian world, it's just not so. They very rarely take texture into consideration, which but in your world, Teresa, it's everything you do is about what fabric am I working on right now.

And I wish I wish the two could just merge. That's what Keya Neil is doing running around the country. Right? Texture versus race.

It's not about race. It's about texture. I just wish half the caucasian girls paid as much attention to texture as the, you know, multi ethnic swans. Man, we would do ten thousand times better if we did it.

But this is what I'm talking about is, people coming in and you can have a blonde person that you've been doing bleach and bleach and bleach on her for months and months and months and switch her over to color at her roots. Start lightening her hair with color and grow it out. Like Bev keeps saying, you gotta grow it out, you gotta grow it out. Well I can start with color while she's growing it out. Does this make sense?

But you have to understand how to do it because then you can't fix anything because we'll fix this in a minute.

So she's five. We're lifting two or nine. We're using fifty volume here to get her five levels of lift.

Now we choose what color line.

Now we not what color line, what color we're gonna use to do this. Alright. She's a five. She wants to be a nine. We're lifting her. We know when we lift, we're gonna expose warmth. So what color am I gonna mix in the bowl with this fifty volume to achieve that?

Anybody?

Miss Sandra.

Me?

If I was doing it and and she wanted I would I wouldn't put an n on it.

I would use this well, what I'm used to for where I come from is Sondra.

What's Sondra? Is it a color line? Ash.

No. It's it. Yeah.

It's it's not you know how you got gold or Yeah. I don't know.

You know, I just get blue.

And red. The purple.

I would use an I definitely would use an ash.

You need an ash. Right? It's warm.

Yeah. You mix the warmth with an ash to neutralize it. Yes? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you guys so you guys know you have to be at the level that you're at.

If she's a nine, I lift her to a nine, I have to use a nine or darker to neutralize that warmth. If she's a warm eight, I have to use an eight or a seven to neutralize her underlying tone. Is everybody with me? The darker color will always dominate the end result.

So whenever you're doing a blonde and she ends up brassy, the reason was her natural undertone was darker than anything you put on her hair in the end.

Hi, it's Darienne.

You ready? You're understanding what I'm saying?

I mean, it was gonna work the keychain and and do it on the I'm just muting Bev.

Do you guys understand what I'm saying to you?

Right? So we lift her to a nine with the fifty volume, maybe a ten on some people. So So now we have to put a color in our bowl that's gonna do that. What do we get? What do we get? What do we get?

What am I gonna put in this bowl with my fifty volume?

Oh, no. Sorry. Would you put a blue, base or ash?

There's no blue at a level nine.

Oh, it's all violet?

It's not even violet. No. I mean, you could have a bluish violet or violet blue but there's blue is a dominating primary color and adds depth and darkness. You can't have a blue at a level nine.

Whoever told you that is full of shit. You can tell me who it was. I will write them a strongly worded letter that they have no fucking idea what they're talking about. But Did you see it?

Can you see it?

I need to explain this.

When you're using color and and, developer, especially when you're lifting this much, the majority of the timing, the first half of the timing, because fifty volume is like fifty minutes.

The the most of the first half of that, you're you're lifting and lightening hair.

Right? You're getting very little deposit of color.

The second half of the timing, especially near the end, you're getting more deposit.

So we're gonna we're gonna lose some color through that fifty minute processing time. I'm gonna lose some of the kernels, some of the kernels, the pigment that's in that color.

So by the time it deposits, it's gonna deposit like a nine.

Does this make sense?

Okay. Now listen to me.

If you have a color line that you have to mix n for gray coverage, It makes it harder for you to do good color with product lines that are designed that way because those part product lines are, you know, like for sea salons. Right? You'd have to drop to a seven if you're working with a color line that you have to mix in for gray coverage.

Because their ashes don't have enough pigment in them anyway. That's why you guys struggle so much doing blonde. You would typically, in this situation, grab nine a and forty volume. The forty volume didn't lift her enough.

There wasn't enough pigment in the nine a. She's not brass. She's not light enough. She's brassy and she's pissed, and you're in a whole corrective color situation.

That's why ninety percent of hairdressers stopped doing it and did bleach twenty volume with a nine v toner afterwards to achieve a decent blonde. It can be done with color. You just have to know how to formulate and you need a good quality color to do it with.

Does that make sense? Does anybody have any questions about this?

In in your two two line Two toe.

Two tone line Yeah.

Excuse me.

That's your at eight point o one?

No. Eight point one.

Do you have a small book?

Do you have a little small swatch book? The point ones are not in the small swatch book. They are here though. And let me tell you something else about the point ones in two tone so you're aware. Alright.

See that?

Yep. See them? They're gray.

Very smoky. See that? K. Gray is the new blue when it comes to ashes. You want an up to date amazing color line.

Gray based ashes are the way to go. Blue darkens because it is a dominating primary color. Violet is only gonna work on pale yellow.

You need gray. Gray neutralizes warmth. It's not dark. It's not violet. It's just gonna go sweat.

And if you wanna do just straight up smokey colors, like lighten them and then do a straight up smokey color, these things are killer. Now you can buy just the ashes in this line and incorporate them with your own product line that you're using. But in our world, where a third of the people we're working on should be cool when we're done, you need a decent Ash series to do it. And this is why buying quality over name and marketing and all that shit really helps, but you have to be educated to do it.

So the point ones right there, they're gorgeous.

Now I would use the point o ones with, if I was doing, I wanted a gray coverage client to be a medium ash brown. Right? I'd use six zero one so she doesn't pull warm and fade brassy, you know, keep her nice and cool. If she wanted to be really smoky brown, then I would do half six zero one, half six point one and keep her really good smoky medium ash brown.

But these ashes are great. So if you have a a fully pigmented line like Trudeau is, right? You don't have to mix n for gray coverage. I would drop to an eight here. I am gonna lose some pigment during the processing time and this is gonna deposit more like a nine than an eight. Does this make sense?

Because of the process of the time as well as the Right.

Outside. Right. Because in the processing time, the first half hour we're lifting. It's lightening your hair but it's also lightening some of the color in the bowl. So I'm gonna lose some color in the bowl.

So I drop a level knowing I'm going to lose some color in the bowl by the time it fully deposits, it's going to deposit like a nine. And here's the trick, right? And this is where the education comes in. If I get done with this and she's still slightly warm, she's not as neutral as I would like her to be, I have to make a note on my card or in her file that says, next time drop to a seven.

Or next time do half seven a, half eight a, or half seven point one, half eight point one.

This is how we tweak and adjust a formula for every single person. On some people I might not have to. It's gonna come out great every time, Especially on the clients that this fifty volume actually got her to a ten.

And this deposits wool like a nine, the color is the darker part of the situation and the color dominates the end result and she is a gorgeous nine NA, which is beautiful on the right person. Is everybody with me following and understanding what I'm saying?

You're not with me? I am not. Okay.

I know. Maybe because I've been doing the same way forever. But is it and this is the point out of my head. So if I'm not right, please correct me. But is it because when you're using the fifty volume, you're going past the underlining pigment of getting getting the red the red orange out. And then it it's actually you're using an eight, but it's gonna look like a nine because it's done past the the other line you picked during that argument.

No. No. No. You're close. You're very close. Okay?

Stay with me, Brandy. I'm gonna I'm gonna explain it.

If we're doing the four steps of formulation, this calls for five levels of lift.

Right.

I decided to use fifty volume.

Depending on her texture, right, that fifty volume on some people that you do it on is gonna lift her a little bit more.

You're safe. Don't go to worry about it. The ones that you're gonna get exactly five levels of lift out of and lift her to a nine, we need to know. That's why we formulate the way we do.

This calls for five levels of lift.

So I'm using fifty to get her to a nine. In some cases, it's gonna take her to a ten. In some cases, it might only take her to an eight.

No different than when you use bleach.

Your bleach does the same thing. You do bleach in twenty volume on three different heads of hair. It's done and you're pulling foils out before you're even done putting foils in or you put them all on.

Five, ten minutes later, she's pale yellow, you take it off. And on other people, you gotta leave the stuff on fifteen, twenty minutes before it gets to pale yellow. Are you following me?

Okay.

So, when we mix color and developer together, especially with lifting, the first half of the of the timing of that is all lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Deposit, deposit, deposit.

The second half of that formula, that timing is deposit, deposit, lift. Deposit, deposit, lift. Alright. I am gonna lose some color because it's not just lightening my hair, it's also oxidizing some color in my bowl.

So by the time this deposits, I've lost enough pigment that it's now a nine. How do you make an eight a nine? You dilute it. How do you make an eight a seven?

You make it more concentrate. Right? It's just the amount of pigment that's in it. Does that help, Brandy? Because you don't look like you're following me.

I mean, I think I just have to rejuvenate my brain to think that way. So the more you talk, the more I'm listening, the more I'll understand it.

And what what is really got you thrown that we're using an eight and it's gonna look like a nine when we're done?

Yeah. Why why is that throwing you? Do you think if I put an eight in the bowl, it should look like an eight?

Well, especially if you put like you were saying, if you have to use a seven, like, how is the seven gonna look like a nine if it's a seven?

Because if I lose pigment alright. Okay.

Here's a bottle of water.

Alright.

That's my eight a.

If I lose some color, if I, if I lose some color, if I pour some color out, there's not as much color in here. It's now a nine.

Are you following me? This amount of pigment makes an eight.

If I lose some of it, there's less pigment, it's a nine. How you go from one level one to level ten is, a level ten is just one diluted.

You keep you keep taking pigment out of a one it becomes a two. You take a little bit more pigment out of a two it becomes a three. Take a little bit more pigment out of a three, it becomes a four. You following me? So when I put eight when I put eight in that bolt and I lose some pigment before it deposits in her hair, it's not depositing as a nine.

Okay. Okay.

I'm gonna lose pigment through the processing time. Does that does that make sense to everybody?

A a portion of it makes sense. So to me, this formulation is for fine hair.

It's, I No.

No. No. Teresa. Teresa, are you talking? Is that you? I can't see your mouth.

No. I can't see my okay. Alright. No. No. No. Teresa.

This formula is not for fine hair. If she's a level five with fine to medium hair and she wants to be a nine, we are lifting five levels.

I have options for lifting five levels. I can do color and extra blonding cream, right, to get five levels. I can use fifty volume, which is what we're doing here just for argument's sake, just for formulation chitchat and gymnastics.

If this is Chewbacca's mother, I'm just using bleach and I'm gonna go back and put a nine on her head.

So you need to know when you're doing this, what head of hair you're working on and how do you achieve these things.

Because I am not going to put bleach in twenty volume on fine to medium hair when I don't have to. And do a two step process when I don't have to do it.

So if you're using blonding cream, what volume will be used?

Forty volume. Right? You're gonna use color.

You're gonna use forty volume and extra blending cream to get five levels.

Does this make sense? So, no. I am not, I don't ever just formulate for fine hair.

Okay. Right. If she's a five going to a nine, I know she's medium hair. It definitely affects what I'm gonna do and how I'm gonna do it.

But this is the four steps of formulation which you should know by now.

I've never used past the forty ever.

And I've been in years.

But you use bleach?

Brian. And don't you always wished all these years that you had something between the forty volume and bleach that could get you some lift?

Oh, absolutely.

Fifty volume or sixty.

That's your in between your forty and your bleach.

Fifty is more mild and more gentle than bleach and more controllable.

Does this does this make sense? Yes. Wait a minute. Laurie's got a question. You gotta unmute, honey bunny.

Now if you're some color lines only go up to to forty volume that you're using, and I'm saying this just in case, you know, it did go to court. If you were to bring in a fifty volume to use with a color line that doesn't repend it, are you It doesn't make sense. Putting yourself in in a legal situation?

I mean, the the color company is gonna throw you under the bus no matter what, Especially your color company. I've I've been on their cases watching them do it. So could it be argued? Yes. You just need a good expert.

Now every color company did makeup back in the day. We used to remember we'd get it in at a hundred volume. The first salon I worked in, we would get a hundred volume developer, and you had a hydrometer, and we made our twenty and our thirty and our forty.

K?

That's that's you, honey.

You get a mute, Laurie. You get a mute.

Mute your thing. You can listen, but, yeah. You get some background. Okay.

You're mute.

Me? I'm You're mute. I am.

Oh, I'm You guys are muted with I muted myself.

Sorry.

So back in the day all the color companies made fifty and sixty. I remember being in a salon in the late eighties, they had seventy volume.

And what happened was, UPS changed the rules. I mean, everybody got we didn't have stores on every corner, Right? And everybody got their product delivered by UPS and UPS said no more, no nothing higher than forty because if it spilled in the package and the UPS guy touched it, he could burn his hands. So like no more. That's actually when high lift blondes came out because they didn't have their fifty or their blonding developer which like a fifty or a sixty back in the day.

So everybody started making high lift blondes that had more ammonia in it to give you a little bit more lift because they couldn't make their high volume developers anymore.

You can buy fifty, sixty volume, hundred volume especially at multicultural beauty, beauty supply places, stores, you can still buy hundred. You can buy fifty and sixty. I am deathly, I have terrible reactions to bleach. It's impossible to be allergic to bleach.

It's not an allergen. But I can have, like, contact dermatitis where I get hives and I fill up and I sneeze. So I don't want bleach in any single way. So if I wanna if I really wanna do that type of work or lift that much, I gotta buy a sixty or a seventy or or a hundred in order to do that for me as a hairdresser just to be able to work, and not work with bleach.

I still do. I'll put a mask on sometimes and some of them aren't as bad as others, but this was available to us. I know for some of you, you're like, oh, holy shit. What what the hell are you telling me? This is how piss poor our education is. You go into SalonCentrix and CosmoProf constantly and fifty and sixty volume have been in all of those stores all the time.

Sally's too. You can go into Sally's.

Clients can walk into Sally's and buy a fifty volume.

How the fuck don't you know about this?

But are we allowed to mix it with whatever color line we're using?

Of course.

Of course, you can. It's fifty volume. You you should be buying generic developer anyway.

I always say buy generic and the only what the only thing I I stickler to that is whatever brand you buy, whether it's salon care or advantage, just stay with it. Just stay with the same developer. Don't mix around. Right?

They all work. It's just that this company, their ten might run, you know, seven to ten. And this company, their ten might run ten to thirteen. So that's a big enough change.

You don't wanna jump around from brand to brand. Just buy one and stick with it.

It. The salons that I work with at their back bar, we have five, ten. We make a fifteen volume. It's important.

In gray coverage, it's important. You don't wanna jump all the way up to twenty, but she's got course enough hair that you want fifteen. So we have five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and sixty. Every salon I work with, you do forty percent blondes.

You can't do it all with bleach and twenty volume with a nine d toner. It's old. It's over. It's old school. It's bad education when I can create incredible blondes with color.

Yes. Processing time for, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty.

Well, the rule is for any developer, the rule is add ten minutes to whatever number is on the bottle. So if it's thirty volume add ten, it's forty minutes.

If it's fifty volume, add ten, it's sixty minutes. But under a medium dryer, we cut that in half, you're done.

Right.

So if you're doing twenty volume It's thirty minutes.

And now I got you.

Right. Yeah. Ten to the twenty. Right.

And look at guys, that's the minimum amount of time. Now, I want while we're talking about developers, let's talk about this.

You know, a tube of color and I might have done this in the class. A tube of color is like a bag of popcorn.

All the kernels are the same, all the dye is the same size and the same shape and the same color just like popcorn.

And it starts to oxidize. Right? And and color oxidizes just like popcorn. It pops into these weird shapes and actually it makes like a string of popcorn like you would hang on a Christmas tree. Right? That's what we want it to. We want it to polymerize.

We want it to oxidize and polymerize and make a continuous chain.

That doesn't always work. The hair is filled with crap, you know, things that don't make it oxidize. You lose pigment in the bowl. You lose kernels in the bowl. You guys all know, you put a bag of popcorn in the microwave, you take it out, half the kernels aren't popped. Right?

Every time you put color on dirty dry hair, half the colonels don't pop.

You put, you know, if you leave, if if you could leave the bag of popcorn in the microwave until all the kernels popped, you'd you'd need a bag twice as big.

Yes?

That's what hair color is. So when we give you times for developer, it is the minimum time, not the maximum.

Very first rule, you're not getting good coverage, you're not getting vibrant color, you're not changing. Leave it on longer so all the colonels pop.

Then the question is, was the hair clean and us, in order for us to get as many colonels in the hair, did you do a Get Pure treatment on it? So we can get as many of those kernels inside the hair, they pop on the inside. Now they're too big to get out.

That is what a tube of color is. So with developer, the timings that we give you are the minimum time, not the maximum.

And that's why the dryer becomes or or a steamer or a rollerball because becomes such a huge tool for you that you can, you know, cut that processing time in half. Really make sure it's left on a good long time so you get all the kernels to pop, but you're not spending all day to do it. And when you're doing these toners for five, ten minutes on soaking wet hair to sink, it only looks good till she gets in the shower the next day. You did nothing. You did nothing but neutralize pale yellow hair which you can do with a really good purple shampoo that you don't even need a nine v toner. You bleach it a pale yellow, use a good purple shampoo and you're done. You don't even need to do that because a toner on somebody's hair for five minutes at a sink does nothing.

Nothing. You stay in the cuticle basically is what you did. Yes.

Brandy?

This is offer. The formulation that you're doing is for on scalp. Correct? Anywhere.

Okay. So if you're using foil, so I transition from bleach to color, do you still suggest using a steamer or a dryer?

Sure. Steamers and dryers are just a tool for time. I mean, you think about it this way like, do I want bleach to sit on her hair for twenty minutes or ten?

It's sort of like boiling water on the stove or the microwave.

It's still boiled water when it's done.

It's just one took you half the time to do it.

Right? So the heat is just a tool for time. And again, with the scalp issues, if you're cleaning and conditioning and, you know, making sure that she has regular demineralizing treatments, you you shouldn't have a lot of issues here. She's got good pH balanced products at home maintaining her acid mantle. You shouldn't have a lot of issues here.

Don't make it a focus. You still need to know how to formulate.

And this is why we do this. Right?

There's always options. Right? And this was part I don't know if any of you are board certified in hair color, but this is what I had to do when I became board certified in hair color. And then I became an evaluator, for that test.

Right? We give you these these formulas that you have to do, and we give you leeway because there's a lot of ways to go home. There's a lot of ways to make her from a five to a nine. I can use, you know, forty volume and extra blonding cream to get five levels to get her there.

I can use fifty volume. I can use bleach in twenty volume. We just wanna make sure that you you're you're in one of those because if anybody wrote forty volume trying to get board certified in hair color, you would have failed.

And that's why when I took the test, out of fifty three hair color educators, twelve of us passed.

Our education is so bad that we don't even know that this is five levels of lift.

How can that be?

And no wonder why all we do is bleach in twenty volume. Ninety percent of our blondes are done with bleach in twenty volume because we don't know how to formulate.

But you can create the most gorgeous blondes.

You can do the most you can do such beautiful work if you know how to formulate with color.

And we have the tools to do it. We have fifty volume. We have sixty volume.

And they look so different than doing it with bleach. They have a they have a better look to them because I'll tell I can spot the bleach in twenty volume. From a hundred paces, it's awful.

Questions about this?

Is it is it marinating?

Questions but I just don't know what to ask.

Like what? We'll just shoot one out there. We'll slap it around, honey.

So so, basically, you're saying to get into the blonde, like, if you're level anything under, fifty because we're not gonna get there. Like, the volume.

If you have five levels in in a particular situation that you're trying to achieve, depending on the fabric that you're working on, you have tools to get you five levels of lift. You have forty volume and extra blonding cream, that'll get you five levels of lift.

You can do fifty volume.

You can do bleach in twenty volume. And look at, if I had resistant hair and and I'm speaking to you, Theresa, because the the the fabric and texture thing is important in your world. Right?

If this was Chewbacca's mother, if she's got really resistant hair and I wanna lift five levels and I but I wanna do it with color.

I'm I'm I'm gonna do this.

You see that?

The sixty nine with the eight a, you still use the color eight a.

Right. I wanna get five levels of lift, but her hair is resistant. So maybe I do a strand test with the fifty. She's just not lifting enough. I wanna just lift it a little bit more. So I do a strand test with sixty because her hair is resistant.

This is this is the whole point of doing the four steps of formulation. It's always gonna keep you in the better situation. So let's look at this. Right? When I'm done, she's a five n, she's gonna be a nine n, medium to course hair. Right? I'm lifting five levels, but to be safe I use sixty just to make sure I get that five levels.

And I'm gonna use eight A.

And when I'm done with this formula, I say to myself, self, what is the better side of the situation for me to be on when I'm done, and what is the easier thing to fix? What is what is the better mistake to make here?

Deeper.

What is the better mistake to make?

Go lighter? Too light.

Too light. That's why you bleach.

The better mistake is to be too light. I can throw a toner on it and darken it. You know what the worst mistake is? Not light enough because now you're in a whole corrective color situation because color doesn't lift color.

So I gotta go in and bleach and blah, blah, blah and fix it all. What's the better mistake to make? And you should be saying this after every single formula to do. What is a better side of the situation for me to be on when I'm done? What is the easier thing to fix?

And and you know what? I wanna make that mistake.

Let's do it.

I wanna do it for formula. Right?

Let's make let's make your mistake.

Right?

Forty volume nine a. Because that's what, like, thousands of hairdressers are doing right now. On a five to nine, they're putting forty volume, it's not four levels. And they're using nine a with a color line that you have to mix in for gray coverage that isn't gonna work even in the best of circumstances. Right? So she's not light enough. She's brassy, and she's pissed.

Real deal. Right? She's sitting in your chair, she's not light enough, she's brassy, and she's pissed. What do you do?

Redo?

Anybody?

Well, to go lighter, I would probably do, sub cap or a boost.

Sorry. I mean, I'm just telling the truth.

I I know. I know. It's just painful sometimes.

Okay. You ready? You go back to number one.

Where are you?

I guarantee you she's eight g.

I guarantee it.

I guarantee she's eight g.

You didn't lift her light enough and she's brassy.

You're at an AG. Where are you going? Nine n.

Are you lifting or depositing?

Still lifting.

How many levels?

One. Two. Two.

Eight. Yes. Nine. Nine. Does color lift color?

No.

No. How do I get my twenty volume to lift more?

Blonding cream.

Plus extra blonding cream.

Am I enhancing or am I neutralizing? Am I working with the warmth or am I fighting it?

They're fighting it.

Fighting it. Nine a, twenty volume, extra blinding cream. That's what formulation does.

There's no shortcuts. There's no guessing. You either know how to do it or you don't. And I don't care if you're doing it for the tenth time that day.

You start with step one.

Gotcha.

Where am I? Where am I going? Am I lifting or depositing? Am I enhancing or neutralizing?

And people are like, oh my god. I don't know what to do. I'll throw some bleach on it. I'll I'll break it up with some foils.

I'll do this. I'll do that. I'll I'll soap cap it. Why don't you just fucking formulate?

That's why I'm here.

I'm kicking in the ass so I knock out the old school, old routine, old bullshit shits out of your head.

That you guys start thinking about being a colorist.

So you learn how to be a colorist.

That old bullshit stuff, no way. You start with one every single time.

Again, I don't care if it's the fourth time you're doing your hair that day, or the first time. I don't care if it's an awful color and screwed up, or if it's beautiful. If you're gonna change somebody's color, with color the only way to do it is this way.

Which is why it's baffling to me when people go, I don't wanna switch colors. I'd rather pay five dollars an ounce than two.

I'm like, are are you crazy?

Are you mental?

Of course, you go if you're paying five dollars an ounce, you switch to you switch to two dollars an ounce and you put three dollars an ounce back in your pocket. Imagine three dollars an ounce every single ounce you do for a year. That's insane money.

Because it's not about the color. It's if you know how to do it. And I swear to God, if you're doing color that all way with a five dollar an ounce color, I'll come over, they'll kick your ass. Because that's just what a waste of time and money.

Brandy, how you feeling about that? How you feeling about that corrective color one?

But I like, starting back at number one.

Yes. Always go back to number one. Use your book. Match it up. Where am I? Where am I going? Am I lifting or depositing?

Am I enhancing or neutralizing?

That's it.

And as soon as you go back to the basics of these four steps of formulation, all the chemists design them because this is the way color works.

That's why every single color company teaches you the same four steps.

The problem is the more, the, the, the less quality of the color, the more rules they have. Well, if it's twenty five percent grain, twenty five percent of the formula needs to be from the n series.

And if it's this, you gotta do this. And if it's this, you gotta do that.

And nowhere ever will this tell you to use a dummy.

Nowhere ever that does this tell you to do any weird thing.

Just tells you the developer and the color that you need.

We need a little bit of science taught to us so we understand that you would drop a level when lifting in that situation.

That's the type of education we need.

Not that you put this, you you know, two hundred and fifty dollar ball of shit in your bleach and you have no more, you know, damage problems. Because if you were taught how to do formulation with fifty and sixty volume, you wouldn't be using bleach all the time.

And it's beautiful when you know how to do it. Beautiful.

Formulate a few if you if you wanna formulate a couple more?

Yes, please.

Okay. Can I ask you an answer?

Absolutely. Yes. Ask away.

Alright. So if I'm telling I will work with, the assumption I got a five level of urge in here.

What am I actually doing if I take say I take, six point seven and seven point seven and eight point seven and just use twenty volume with each of that five level.

Okay. Wait a minute.

Are you mixing all of those point sevens together? Together. Separate. Okay. Well, let's formulate it.

Let's formulate it. Okay? She's a five.

Where do you want her to be, honey?

Well, this is why I'm saying it's a ask back question because I'm saying, what actually happens if I use twenty volume with the six point seven seven point seven?

Okay. So let's do it. Right? We won't go we won't go the destination. You're using twenty volume, which is gonna which is gonna lift one to one to two levels.

Right. Right? Given the hair type. Right? Correct. If you look in your manuals, your color manuals, it'll tell you when you have twenty volume.

It'll say one to two levels of lift. Ten volume will say zero to one.

Thirty volume says two to three because of fabric.

That's why these rules were designed. So we know we're gonna get one to two levels of lift out of this. We're gonna lift. It's gonna be very warm underneath.

Right.

Right? We're gonna have real good warmth underneath that. And then you put, let's say, seven point seven under there. Correct.

Okay. So if I do twenty volume and I lift her to a six, in a good situation, I lift her to a six which is warm, but I use a level seven color. Her natural undertone is going to dominate the end result because it's darker than the color you put in the bowl. Right.

So why bother?

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Like, if I'm looking for just like different shading in the hair, not like Okay.

But you have to pick the shading that you want.

Right.

But my question is, when I'm doing that, when I'm taking the seven seven or an eight seven or a five level The only way you'll see that seven seven is if she has gray and white hair.

So that's not gonna move that five at all?

Well, what's moving the five is the volume, not the color.

Right. But I mean, it's I'm still gonna get a little bit, different shading than the five n to what I started with.

Yeah. You're gonna end up a six warm.

Right.

So, basically, what, you know, I'm saying what Okay.

You've you're trying to be creative without being creative. I just want some different shit going on, some warmth and some and that's great. It's still gonna look that way, but why not go this is exactly the way I want it to look and make it look that way.

Right?

So if I want her to be six point seven Okay.

Right, I use twenty volume. Right? Five, six. I'm lifting two levels. Five, six. I lift to with the twenty volume, and I use six point seven.

Okay.

Right? Now I the tube, the level of the color is the same level I'm mixing lifting her to.

Right? So I can see.

So I lift her to a six, I use a six.

Mhmm. So they blend.

Right? It it's gonna make a new color. Right? Because you're now are you enhancing or neutralizing?

You're enhancing. You're not fighting her warmth. You're you're working with it. So I use the six.

Remember, the darker color will always dominate the end result.

So So if you lift her to a six but you use a seven in the bowl, I mean, all you could just lift it to a six with, you know, just use blonding cream and twenty volume. I mean, you're you're not lifting you're not achieving any color that you want. You're just lifting her to warmth and everybody's warmth looks a little different. Right?

Mine might be a little bit more orangey. Somebody's might be a little bit more red orange. So you're getting all sorts of different results. You just don't know why you're doing it.

But you can control it.

You can control it to to do it that way. You could do it you could do all three of those colors like you said, six, seven, and eight on one head.

Right? So here we go.

Formulation formulation versus creativity. Right?

Four section, a four section min, you know, you would, you would, you, you would section around in four, Right? So, and I do the basic four section application where we start here, right?

Little triangle here. And I do right. This would be twenty, seven point seven would be thirty, Eight point seven would be forty volume.

You see what I mean?

Yeah.

Okay. So I'm gonna have three bowls, and I take my first section, I do the six point seven and twenty. I take my next section, I do seven point seven and thirty. The next section, I do eight point seven and forty volume. Then I start over again.

Right. But make it look like something, not just guessing.

Right. I go, I don't care which way you do it. It's all creative. I don't really give a shit which one you put first and how you do it.

That doesn't make a bit of difference to me. But I can have three bowls, just take a section and go, you know, apply it, put this one over here, you know, so so you know where you're going. But I could do all three of those in one head and have multidimensional, warmth and and, color going through the head. I can certainly do that, but you need to know how to formulate.

Right.

So because if I was gonna use twenty volume with a seven seven or eight seven It wouldn't work.

In. It wouldn't work.

It's a waste of time.

No. It's total waste of time.

Well, it's not a waste of time.

It's just a waste of color because you're not actually achieving a seven point seven or an eight point seven. You're only gonna achieve, whatever that twenty volume lifted her to. And remember, this is about, the these rules are designed to keep you in the better the the better side of the situation.

If that five n is really resistant hair and you only get one, you know, you yeah. You you might just get a deposit only situation on our two twenty volumes. Some of the time, it's just a deposit only. But that's why we do this. We go five n, medium, fine, coarse. I've cleaned it. I've done all the things I know that I it's gonna work the way it should when I do formulation.

But this is probably the key reason why so many people screw up and don't buy color correctly, don't formulate correctly.

This is it. Forty percent of the work that we're doing in salons right now is gray coverage. And ninety percent of that is four through eight n and twenty volume.

And forty percent of the work we're doing in salons is blondes, and ninety percent of that is bleach with twenty volume and a nine v toner. You're all doing the same thing over and over and over again, and it's wrong.

Two thirds of the time you do those formulas, you're wrong. Now Now wouldn't it be amazing if you could just look at a color or pick out a color in the book and formulate it to that?

So if I would if I would have taken that eight seven with twenty five on that five end, what would I have gotten?

Well, you you would have lifted her to a six.

A six is way darker than an eight.

So the six would have dominated the end result and you would have seen very little eight point seven. So why bother?

If you want her eight point seven, make her eight point seven.

Correct.

If that's the color you want, then you do it.

Right. But there isn't a color you can't do on in this book if if you know how to do this. I can create I can create anything.

Right. It would be what's the point?

What's the why bother? Does anybody else wanna see a formula or talk about a formula?

So let's do a it could be a shade darker. Their their natural color is a a four.

Okay. Her natural color is a four.

And she wants to be a nine.

She wants to be a nine.

And no warmth.

Nine and no warmth. How many levels of lift is that?

Six.

Yes. Six.

Six levels of lift. So we're doing six. Now I could use sixty volume.

I have options, honey.

There's more than one way to go home.

Mhmm. So I could try with sixty volume. I could do a strand test with sixty volume to see if I get it to a nine, or I have bleach in twenty that I could try?

You would you use a nine a?

Well, let's just talk let's just talk about the lift first so you understand. Okay. When you do a formula, you talk about one then the other.

Okay. So I could mix the sixty volume with color to see if I get six levels of lift.

Right.

And and a strand test with bleach, I'd probably go twenty or thirty volume on that bleach to get her six levels depending on the fabric of her hair.

So you have options based on are you working on silk or corduroy, honey?

The silk gets the sixty, the corduroy gets the bleach. Are you following me?

Yes.

Okay. You have options, but you still need to know how to do this.

Mhmm.

And if I was to mix this with color, it would be. So I have enough kernels in my popcorn bag that when it deposits, it gets rid of all her warmth.

Could you use the fifteen Blonding Cream with that?

Sure. It's six levels.

Seven, eight.

Sure. It's six levels. So we have options, but first, you need to know what you're doing.

Right? You need to know how many levels you're lifting, strand tests are your friend.

Right?

Take a strand test, make sure it takes ten minutes. You hit it with a blow dryer, it takes ten minutes for a strand test to be right. But you know how much fun you can have coloring hair using color instead of using six through eight n and twenty volume and bleach in twenty volume? You know how fun color is that you can do these things?

It's we just don't we're just never taught how to do it. Yes, Brandy.

You wanna see a formula?

Can we yeah. Can I like to work with red? Yep. Can we do, like, a level five and a copper red?

This is where Is she already copper?

Is she already copper or we're going to copper?

We're going copper.

Okay. What level copper are we going to?

But can we do just like a six? Sure.

I mean, unless and what what I'm working on here is, like, using the underlying pigment Yeah.

As opposed to Let's just let's just do it. Right? So we wanna be six copper.

Right?

So how many levels are we lifting?

Two.

Two levels. Right? So twenty volume.

And when I lift, I'm gonna pull warmth.

Right? I'm gonna pull some copper. Right? It's gonna be Yeah. Or orangey. Right? So are you enhancing or neutralizing?

I would say You're not fighting the warmth.

I'm not fighting it.

So you're enhancing. Right? Yeah. So if I did six n, it would still be warm. It would be coppery.

Right? If I did six copper, it gonna be super coppery.

Right.

If I did six super copper, they're gonna be like scream and pumpkin orange.

So where where do you wanna be? Or where does she wanna be?

Six n.

Yeah. Because it's gonna it's gonna do it on its own.

Right.

It's gonna do it on. So so you can you can just go a little bit or you can help that you can help that along because it's gonna happen on its own.

Okay. I see. Yeah. So let me let me throw this at you. I don't know. I don't I don't wanna go too advanced here and get crazy now.

Right?

You know, people want those like fire engine, you know, fire engine red, streaks running through the hair, and everybody's bleaching it and putting direct dye on it.

I mean, every color company has a fire engine red. Right? You guys I don't know if any of you guys have bought this, but if you have not done this yet, I'm just telling you, buyer beware.

These reds are gonna scare the shit out of you. They're good.

And they work unlike you're used to working. So they're gonna scare the crap out of you. But see the fire engine on your right?

Let's let's just take a, seven point seven point six six right here.

See that?

Okay.

She's five n. She wants to be seven point six six. I want those streaks running through my hair.

Would most of you bleach and then color it?

No.

I'm gonna give you a little this is when you know formulation and you can tweak the rules and adjust the rules to to work with you. Because once you know the rules, then you can break them. Can't break them till you know them. Right?

I want a clean, good seven point six six. We know when we lift this five n to seven, she's got orange under there that's gonna mix with my red. I don't want it to look red orange, I want it to look red red. I want the seven point six six to dominate the end result.

Are you with me?

K.

How many levels am I lifting here?

Three. Five to seven. Right? Five, six, seven, three.

I'm gonna lift past my goal and then deposit back down so it's clean. Right? So I'm gonna use forty volume. I wanna lift past the seven.

The first half of my formulation time is mostly lifting and I'm getting her past the goal that I want her to be.

And then I'm gonna drop it down to this.

Then I'm gonna use six point six six.

So it's sorta like bleaching and toning in one step.

That's what bleach does. You lift past your goal and then you put a color on it.

Is everybody with me?

Nod if you are. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, nod so I can fix it. I'll just start throwing shit at the screen.

I'll start throwing shit at your heads.

Does this make sense?

Mhmm.

See, once you know the rules, you can do that because you can do that with blondes too. I'm gonna reverse it right now. Right?

She wants to be seven, NA, NA.

She wants to be a cool seven.

Neutral ash, just, just to the cool side of neutral.

Lifting or depositing?

Lifting. Lifting. Typically, this would be thirty volume, five, six, seven. But I want her to have a cool result.

And even if I got my formula absolutely perfect, the best thing I can end up with is just seven n, not seven n a.

Are you with me?

Yes. Okay. So I'm gonna lift past my goal and then drop down and use six point one.

Right? So I lift past it. I lift her up to an eight.

I use a heavier dye load of color because the darker you go, the heavier the dye load it is. So I end up with a seven NA.

Are you with me?

Does that make sense?

See, you can't tweak the rules and play with the rules till you understand the rules.

But there is nothing you can't formulate with color until you get into lifting six, seven levels on really coarse hair. That's when the bleach gets pulled out. Anything else is achievable with color if you know how to do this and prettier and easier on the hair and longer lasting.

What did you say go when you go past what level you need to use bleach?

Oh, you're doing like six or seven levels of lift on really coarse hair.

Or, you know, the hair is already colored and you have to lift it. You have to use bleach to do it.

But we we should be able to be formula there there shouldn't be a hairdresser, you know, in December of twenty twenty one that thinks five to nine is four levels of lift. We have really, missed missed the target of of having educated colors coming out into the world and, and and being able to function with color. You sold all the organic and all natural and the brand bullshit and all this. And what good is it if you can't even formulate a simple blonde color?

That's criminal in in my mind. It's criminal that you would spend, you know, ten dollars for a tube of color and you don't know what developer to use in a formula. That's criminal to me.

Is there a rule of thumb more or less when you're going, three levels using forty volume, you need to use a heavier nylon?

Is that kind of like You know, it's it's it's a ballpark.

Right? If as soon as I get into forty volume, I start playing with that a little bit. You know, because you now you forty volume. You got a lot of lifting action going on with the forty volume. And then you say to yourself, what is the better side of the situation for me to be on when I'm done?

Right? What is the better side of the situation to be on when I'm done? If it's a warm result, then not so much do I do that. But if it's a cool neutral to cool result, I will drop my my color that I'm mixing in with my developer.

If that if it's a cool result.

Yeah. If it's a neutral to neutral cool result, I'll drop it. But if I'm heading in a warm direction, typically, I I don't do that because I'm just working with what's already there and why not, you know.

How's everybody doing?

Okay. I have a situation I wanna maybe try to work out. Okay. Let's do it. So I I have a client who has probably, twenty percent gray. Mhmm. And she she's a level six.

And when I did her, last teller, there was too much red.

I wanted to be like a, So she's only twenty percent gray.

We are not formulating for gray.

Oh, okay.

Right? Eighty percent of her hair is six n. So I don't give a shit about two out of ten hairs.

Do you understand? So we are not formulating for gray when there's only twenty percent.

When it's effect when it's affecting when it's affecting my end result.

What color do you want her to be, Teresa?

Well, basically, her natural color, which would be Six a.

Six. Yes. Yeah.

But it came out like a, six g or actually came out like a six r.

So you wanted to be six n. You used twenty volume, didn't you?

Yes. Okay. Well, she only has twenty percent gray.

When you use twenty volume, what happens to your six n, her natural color?

It goes too.

It goes warm.

Oh, that's right.

So the color did exactly what you told it to do. If she's a six and she's staying a six, what developer do you use?

Ten.

Ten.

You didn't formulate. You saw her gray hair, you went to twenty volume because you're programmed to do it. If she's a level six and you're staying at a six, it's ten volume.

Half the gray coverage clients you're doing right now, half, you should be using ten volume on.

Go back and look at your formulas. If you're staying at the same level, if I'm just covering gray, it's ten volume.

And even ten volume on a few people will lift like me.

You put ten volume on me, I get a little bit of lift. So in a couple weeks as I'm washing my hair and it starts fading, it gets warm because I got lift from the developer. This is why you follow the four steps of formulation every single time.

Okay. So what if she's a six, what if she's a six r wants to be a six n?

Okay. Alright. Hold on. We're doing it. We're doing it.

She's six r and she wants to be six n. She wants to get rid of the red.

Right.

Are you lifting or depositing? Depositing. Ten volumes. Are you enhancing or are you neutralizing? Neutralizing.

Six point one and ten volume.

Okay.

Right? You're going ash over warm to neutralize.

Mhmm.

Are are you with me?

Yes.

Okay. Does that make sense to you?

Yes.

Right. Don't let don't let the red color freak you out. Like, oh, I gotta get some green and I gotta do this and I gotta do just do what the formula tells you to do.

Gotcha. Right.

Yes, Brandy.

Okay. So what if we have a six a and we wanna do eight c?

Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, let's do it. Wait. Wait a minute. So what where are we starting from?

Six a.

Six Well, yeah. She's a six ash. She's a six ash.

Like, dishwater is what they always say. I'm assuming those ash. Oh. Yeah. Six a. Yeah.

Eight c. Eight c is number two.

Eight c as in copper or ash? Yeah. Eight copper. So she's a six a. You want her to be eight c?

Yeah. Okay. How many levels are you lifting? Because we're in a lifting here. So we're going six, seven, eight, three levels, thirty volume.

Are you enhancing or neutralizing?

Enhancing.

Eight c thirty volume. Even when you lift dishwater, there's warmth under there.

Right. Because there's warmth in every, like, even nine, level nine.

Only if she was pure white is is it not gonna happen.

So we're lifting case that she was pure white since we're already there.

If we're if she's if her hair is white Yeah. She wants to be eight c, lifting or depositing. Volume.

Ten volume.

Eight c.

Do you understand? I hope this is sinking in because I don't wanna have to beat the shit out of anybody. I like you all.

But this doesn't help.

I I like each and every one of you.

I like each and every one of you. No matter what you do, no matter what color it is, you have to walk it out. Trust me, this will get to a point where it's automatic in your head like it is with me.

It's absolutely automatic with me. But because you guys have been so all over the board and not doing it at all and understanding that your developer was all screwed up. You have to literally go back and do it. I had a salon just outside of Boston in Brookline, which is Boston, but they did this salon banged it out and they did two hundred colors a week.

They hung up, you know, the Post it, the big giant Post it. They left it in the back room that everybody went back and reformulated every client they did. Sometimes it was just a tweak like they had to drop from twenty to ten. They were they were pretty close and sometimes it was just a little bit.

And they went through every single client and reformulated, held the book up, tweaked their formulas. And you know what happened as a result of this? It wasn't huge changes like, oh my god, it was earth shattering. But what did happen was when they absolutely nailed it, like they were so close to what the person wanted, but when they nailed it, referrals skyrocketed.

Referrals skyrocketed.

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