The longer you are a hair stylist, the more your books will be filled with clients wanting a consistent hair color all the time. I want to give you a few of my trusted tips I use with every color to ensure a perfectly even and predictable color every single time!

First of all, I know some of you are probably turning your nose up to this subject and thinking to yourself…I do perfect colors every time! In a defensive manner. I am sure most of you already have great technique and have an extremely successful salon business because of it. Why not just read along though and see how you might be able to tweak just one or two little things.

I am a HUGE believer in optimization!

By optimization I mean, sucking the life out of every second I can to be better faster and stronger!

I am a bit of a perfectionist and I LOVE learning so I never turn away from the opportunity to learn something I already know how to do because even if I don’t learn something new, sometimes I relearn something I already knew in a different way. That is the kind of out of the box learning I truly love the most! 

When I first got into blogging, I wasn’t immediately drawn to blogging about hair. If you have been following me for a while you probably remember me mentioning in the past that I started out as a health blog which I actually still run today with a friend of mine. I took what I was learning about blogging when creating my sales funnel and said…I can totally use this strategy to bring in extra money online!

That led to me starting the blog for my salon which eventually led to my creation of inmysalon.com!

So, this was my long and drawn out way of saying…stop acting like your so perfect you have NEVER had a spot in your colors, or not had a few hair cover at the hairline! These are the kind of issues I am addressing in this post!

#1: Have systems in place!

I’m going to group all of the basics for consistent hair color into this one so we can cover some more creative tips in the next few. Have a system for how you complete your color service!

Do a thorough consultation.
Color match.
Get detailed and specific about it.
Pay attention to your how much color you use, your formula and how much time everything took.
Write this all down after the service.
This should be on a client card in a client card box or folder.
How much did you charge them?
What would you do differently!

These are the things you should be doing and keeping track of and thinking about when it comes to the systems that you create for your salon studio.

#2: Be prepared!

If there was only one piece of advice I could give you about running your salon studio, in general, it would be this one but it is especially beneficial when you are trying to achieve consistent hair color…Have your salon set up with everything you will need for your color service? Get as much set up as you possibly can before the client comes in that way you shave some time off of gathering everything together and looking unorganized to your guest. Even if you are the most organized hair stylist in the world if you are moving from one side of the room to the other and opening multiple cabinets you are looking like you aren’t set up.

It may feel like a tiny part of your job but the time it takes for you to tear your foil and wrap it around your tail comb or whatever your technique is actually costing you about 15 minutes on top of your application time. If you pre-fold your foils you give yourself a secure edge for your highlight and giving you the option to use the foil for a highlight or balayage with a board. Pre-folding your foils takes very little time when you are really good at it.

I also have this great little box I found at Ikea that fits my folded foils PERFECTLY making them easy to store and way more professional looking to pull out in front of your client than those Reynolds boxes! Oh, and Reynolds 711 or 511 foils are THE best. The roll is difficult to work with and ends up costing you more in the end. If you haven’t ever used Reynolds Foil then THAT needs to happen. Trust me!

#3: Explain to the importance of consistent appointments

This is probably one of the most important parts of giving your clients consistent hair color! How often they need to come back in to maintain and what they need to be using at home. It would make more sense to make this point last seeing as usually, this is something people only bring up at the end when their guest asks, “when should I come back in?” but I like to discuss this with my guest during our consultation. Setting some expectations for them about how often they need to come in and what that process will be like for them.This also gives you the opportunity to show them the products they should use and you can teach them later in the appointment how to use it.

I talk more in-depth about this in my post Raising the Bar: How to give All Star Customer Experience

#4: Sections so thin you can see through them!

This tip has a couple layers. Firstly, you need to make sure you are sectioning the hair properly if you ever expect to really get consistent hair color. Always split the hair into four quadrants, and use the same application technique on the entire head. Do not switch up your technique part of the way through the color because no matter how great you think it will blend, it won’t! If it has once before, be grateful and don’t do it again!

Now you want to take long thin subsections for your application, sections so thin you can see through them. I know, you think the color will absorb through a slightly thicker section because it usually works just fine. Here is the thing… some hair is so coarse and thick it is very difficult to get sections so thin you can see through them without being pretty dang skilled. If you cheat your way through all of your average color touch-ups I am certain that when someone comes in with very thick hair you are going to struggle to get the color evenly applied without any holidays (man, I wanted to avoid that word)!

When I used to travel around my local area and teach color for other salons I would often get this question, “why do I have a tiny little dot of gold at the root of my highlight? It’s not a bleed and 95% of the hair is the perfect blonde but I can’t seem to get rid of that gold band still!” This is because the section that they picked up before they did their weave, was too THICK!

If you want a chunkier highlight you cannot pick up a big thick section and then weave it and expect the lightener to saturate the hair evenly through. The area is too small and the hair is too compact! You have to take thin sections and then weave bigger pieces inside the sub-section to get the lightener evenly onto the hair you want to be lightened. This also helps you get closer to the scalp without bleeding!

#5: Perm Papers on the hairline!

Are you having trouble with the hairline when you are covering grey hair? My absolute favorite trick and the one that I get asked about in my salon studio location is why I put perm papers on my clients hairline while they are processing. This is why my friends!

When you are covering grey it is important for the hair to remain saturated for the duration of the processing time to cover. Especially when you are working with wirey coarse grey hair you will have little hairs that want to stick out in various different directions poking out of the color you have applied. If you place a perm paper over the color after you have applied it to this section it will press the hairs down and keep them in the color without actually absorbing. You see they were designed to hold hair in place and not absorb the perm solution so it is the perfect way to use these guys for something else!

I also use perm papers when I am doing a combo color, or a highlight with a base color in between. I will place them around the hairline to keep the color from smudging onto the foil and/or side of the clients face! It’s not a perfect solution but it work about 80% of the time!

BONUS TIP:

Ok, I’m being sarcastic calling this a bonus tip but of course all of this is with the biggest concern throughout your entire color process being to KEEP IT CLEAN!!!!

Apply the color away from your client’s face and don’t get it all over their skin. If you do, have some color remover handy and get it right away so it doesn’t stain! Nobody wants to leave the salon and have to either go home and wash their hair to get rid of color stains or hide until they can remove them! You want your clients to leave your salon feeling their absolute best so they can go on with their day and be your best billboard!

Make sure to give your clients a couple of your business cards and remind them that your best compliments come in the form of referrals!

You won’t ever get what you want if you don’t ask for it!

Remember, not stopping is how you win!