Maximizing Your Beauty, Minimizing Damage
Refreshing your Ends

The very act of changing the color of your hair is a complex chemical procedure. Considering that, haircolor today is a miraculously 'user- friendly' product. Easily within an hour you can lighten and brighten your hair, cover your gray, or dramatically change your appearance with an entirely new hair color!

HaircolorAtHome strives to give you detailed information so that your hair coloring experience will be as successful as the most expensive salon haircolor service.

The directions inside your box of haircolor are packed with useful information. You can learn about allergy testing, strand testing and application procedures. You can also expect to achieve a relatively close shade to that represented on the box when the directions are followed.

'Refreshing' the color on the ends of your hair every time you color your hair however opens a Pandora's box of color problems that aren't easily solved by a novice, or often even by a professional.

• There are kinder gentler ways to maintain your haircolor: Of course when applying haircolor to your virgin hair, you must color your entire head of hair.
• However after the initial process, there is no need to color the ends of your hair time and again. (The practice of refreshing the ends of your hair with the same formula you have just used to color your new growth actually causes your hair to fade more quickly-often to a brassy tone.) Over time, your hair will become badly damaged-how much often depends on the amount of lightening in the coloring process. This damage is exasperated when using a hi-lifting haircolor or a bleach-as in the case of hi-liting.
• Minerva acknowledges that haircolor does fade between touch-ups, the normal amount being one shade (or level). Semi-permanent haircolor will better maintain your haircolor and more importantly, the integrity of your hair. Color only your new growth and rinse the color as described as below.
• When rinsing your permanent haircolor formula from the new growth of your hair, this site advises that you avoid shampooing the color through your hair. Instead, standing under the shower head, let the water run through your head-rinsing your color as much as possible-until the water runs clearly. (You may need to lift up your hair to rinse the haircolor from your hair).
• You may also use no-ammonia haircolor to color the ends of your hair. No-ammonia haircolor will accomplish the same as a semi-permanent color and will last longer.


• If you choose to refresh your ends with your permanent haircolor formula, try limiting this practice to every 3-4 times that you color your hair.

Minerva would like to stress that over the counter is more advanced than ever before. Even the strongest of hair however cannot stand the chemical processing of being repeatedly colored with permanent haircolor. This site looks forward to the day that permanent haircolor packaging includes a semi-permanent or no-ammonia haircolor to refesh your ends . This would be a very smart technique!