how to TONE highlights to BLEND grey hair

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ASSESSING the hair

today i'm gonna be showing you how to SOFTEN gray hair with a toner. 

my client patti is about 50% gray, but it's really SCATTERED and random. some of it is growing gray in clumps, and other parts are growing in more salt and pepper. she is someone that would like to stretch out her appointments as long as possible before needing to come in again so the best way to blend out her grey is by doing HIGHLIGHTS. 

as you obviously know, highlights don’t affect any hairs that aren’t in the foils. the challenge that patti faces is that not only is her hair COARSE, it's also quite curly, especially around the PERIMETER. we need to do SOMETHING to soften the grey hairs that don’t get highlighted (otherwise they are really difficult to hide when she is styling her hair on her own at home). 

today i’ll show you how to soften those grey hairs by using a TONER so that her overall finished result is BLENDED and nice and soft. 

PRO TIP: this won’t work on everyone. i don’t think i would ever do this on anyone that has a natural color darker than a level 7. i’d also proceed cautiously depending on what you want the finish result to be. i wouldn’t recommend doing this for anyone that wants a really ashy finish.

here's patty's hair all HIGHLIGHTED and RINSED OUT. you can see these curly little grey buggers left here by her ear.

here i'm mixing patty's TONER. in the bowl i have 9N and 5 vol. the reason why i chose to mix her toner with 5 vol is it because it has a little bit more ammonia than just using a demi. i do allow it to OXIDIZE a little bit in the bowl so that there's not really any lifting power. i don’t want it to bump her base at all, i just want to soften the gray.

PRO TIP: you need to formulate differently depending on what color line you’re using and what the person's head of hair looks like. there is no cookie cutter answer on how to formulate for blending gray hair.

i’m going to start APPLYING the toner to the areas that have the most wirey, gray hair first so that it sits on there the longest.

time to let the hair PROCESS. you can already see through the toner that her grey hair is SOFTER.

now her hair is all DONE. look at how BLENDED it is and look how soft her gray looks.

so that's it for today's video. i hope you enjoyed it. remember that you're BRILLIANT, you're BEAUTIFUL, and you're going to go on to accomplish some AMAZING THINGS. have a beautiful day. Bye. XOXO