Tips to Maintain Vibrant Hair Color

As a licensed hairstylist and someone who has pink hair myself, I know a thing or two about vivid hair colours! This video explains everything you need to know to keep your hair colour from fading, or keep scrolling to read all about it ↓

Having brightly coloured hair is a lifestyle. It’s a trademark. It’s eye-catching. It’s a conversation starter. It makes you stand out from most other people. I am known for my pink hair!

Blonde highlights are gorgeous… a rich brunette is beautiful… but let me tell you, I’ve had pink hair for two years. People literally stop me in the street to talk to me about my hair. I carry my business cards everywhere I go because chances are, someone is going to stop me and ask about it. One time I was standing at a bus stop, and a woman pulled over her car to yell out the window that she loved my hair. She stopped at a green light and held up traffic just to write down my contact info. Vibrant hair is not for people who don’t enjoy being the centre of attention.

Apart from your social status, having vivid hair majorly affects your beauty routine. It is very high maintenance, and caring for it is completely different from maintaining a more natural colour. In this article, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know about achieving and maintaining brightly coloured hair. It’s a ton of work, and can be quite expensive. But it is so worth it!

The Process

Hair has to be extremely blonde for a vivid colour to show up in it. This is one of the main reasons brightly coloured hair is so much maintenance. Only about 2% of the world’s population have naturally blonde hair, and even natural blondes usually are not an ideal shade for vibrant colours. This means your hair will almost always have to be lightened (a more graceful word for “bleached”) first, and then coloured your desired shade.

This is known as a double process or multi-step colour. Every time your roots come in, they will need to be lightened first, and then coloured. Essentially you’re having your roots done twice in one visit. This means you need to be prepared to spend about 3-4 hours in the salon every 6-8 weeks.

6-8 weeks might sound like overkill for salon visits. There are a few reasons why you need to go to the salon so frequently when you have a vibrant hair colour.

You’ve probably heard that being blonde is high maintenance and involves frequent upkeep. Bleach is a finicky product. Many different factors affect how well it will do its job, including heat. Bleach processes faster (and therefore blonder) with heat. Your scalp gives off a lot of heat, meaning when your whole head is getting lightened, the first 1/4 inch or so of your regrowth is going to process quicker than everywhere else. This means that if you let your roots go for 4 months and it’s 2 inches long, half your regrowth will lift to a bright blonde, and the other half will be a darker yellow. I had some very long roots after the salon I work at was locked down in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Check it out:

The vibrant colour you put over top will be two different colours in these areas. Applying more bleach to those areas will lead to excessive damage and breakage and should be avoided. So for a beautiful consistent colour, and healthy hair, frequent bleaching is a must!

The other main reason for recurrent salon visits is that vibrant colours fade fast (more info on that later). Going to the salon every 6-8 weeks not only maintains your roots, but also makes the rest of your colour fresh again.

Why should I go to the salon instead of doing it myself at home?

Bleach is a very strong chemical product. Even the most high quality lightener applied by a professional will cause some damage and breakage.

The bleach you can buy at your local drug store or beauty supply is made with much harsher chemicals than the professional product your hairstylist uses. Box bleach is “one size fits all”. It is made to lighten 4 years worth of black box dye on the thickest, curliest hair you’ve ever seen. So putting it on fine, thin, medium brown hair is going to be waaaay more powerful than necessary! At the salon, we have many different types of lighteners and different strengths of peroxide that we custom mix for your hair. It will only be as strong as your hair actually needs for your desired result. I often use 2 or 3 different formulas on one head of hair depending on their colour history! You just don’t get that from a box. And that’s why you see so many videos of people’s hair turning into melted spaghetti in their fingers.

Even as a trained professional, it is extremely rare for me to lighten my own hair. Overlapping bleach onto hair that has already been bleached before causes major breakage, and it is very difficult not to overlap when you are doing your own roots (especially when you get to the back!). You will never be as precise on your own head as a hairstylist will.

A hairstylist can tell you exactly how to care for your hair colour and give you amazing, high quality products to take home and use. Healthy hair is beautiful hair!

How do I care for my colour between appointments?

Vibrant colours are almost always a semi-permanent hair colour (sometimes called a “direct dye”), This means it doesn’t get mixed with a an oxidative developer, it is applied to your hair the way it comes out of the tube. This type of colour does not make a chemical change to your hair, it just sits on the surface.

When we use a permanent hair colour, it is mixed with a developer that opens your hair cuticle and makes a change to your hair from the inside. Permanent hair colour can lighten hair by a few shades, fully cover grey, and even out patchy colour. Semi-permanent colour just tints the hair at its current lightness level, which is why the yellow band we talked about earlier will be visible.

Bleach opens the cuticle of the hair (more aggressively than permanent colour), allowing a semi-permanent colour to deposit deeper than surface level. This is another reason why natural blonde is not a great base for a vivid hair colour. The cuticle is sealed, so vibrant colour can’t get inside and will just sit gently on the surface. It will look more pastel, and won’t stick around for long. However, bleaching causes some permanent opening of the cuticle, leaving your hair much more porous than it is naturally. This means colour also washes out quickly, because the cuticle is not sealed to keep it in place.

So with all of this science taken into account, vibrant colours fade much faster than permanent colours. Your hair will look its brightest when you leave the salon, and will start fading the moment you step outside into the sun’s UV rays.

All of these factors cause fading:

• hot water
• chlorine and salt water
• shampoo (particularly drugstore brands that contain harsh chemicals and sulfates)
• low quality styling products
• heat styling
• UV rays (sunlight)
• hair damage and porosity

Follow these steps to keep your colour vibrant for as long as possible:

• wash only in cold water
• avoid getting your hair wet in pools and hot tubs
• wash infrequently (once/week is ideal)
• use salon professional shampoo & styling products that are sulfate-free and designed to protect hair colour
• heat style infrequently, and always use thermal protecting products before styling
• apply products with triple UV protection before spending time in the sun
• keep your hair healthy with weekly treatments and regular haircuts

Here is some more detailed info on each of these tips:

Hot water opens the cuticle, cold water seals it. Cold water will help protect the colour from leaking out in the shower. You don’t have to give yourself brain freeze, but the colder the better. I have a handheld showerhead attachment and I use it to wash my body in warm water, and wash my hair over the side of the tub in cold water. Cold water just on your head is not as bad as it sounds, in fact I find it refreshing and actually prefer it over warm water now!

Salt and chlorine are very hard on colour, it’s basically the same as bleaching it. Avoid swimming in pools, but if you must and you don’t have a swim cap, soaking your hair with regular shower water and some conditioner or leave-in product beforehand will really help. Your hair is like a sponge – if it’s already full of water and product, it will not be able to absorb much of the chlorine or salt water.

Water itself fades colour, so keep washing to a minimum. Once/week might sound insane to you. Sometimes I go 2 weeks without washing my hair. Your natural oils are the best thing for your hair and scalp, and help to keep them healthy. Your hair and scalp want and need these oils. The more you wash and strip the oils, your scalp will over-produce them to compensate, especially if you are using a harsh drugstore shampoo. When you give it a break, your scalp will adjust over time and not produce so much oil. If you’re an every day washer, start with every other day for a while. Then push it to every third day. Then every fourth and so on. Dry shampoo is a lifesaver when you’re going through this process, this one by L’ANZA Healing Haircare is my favourite.

When you wash your hair, focus your shampoo just at your roots. That’s where your natural oils are produced. Your ends don’t really need to be shampooed. When you condition, focus your conditioner just on your ends. Your natural oils are conditioning enough, and putting conditioner directly on your roots will make your hair look greasy very quickly.

Sulfates are an ingredient that make shampoo lather, but they are terrible for your colour and the health of your hair. Some sulfate-free shampoos don’t lather very much. Some have natural lathering agents that are colour-safe, like L’ANZA Healing ColorCare Shampoo.

Many styling products also contain chemicals that fade colour (ex. salt in some brands of sea salt spray), so always use high quality styling products by a salon professional brand. There are tons of products specifically designed to protect hair colour, including ones with triple UV protection. L’ANZA Color Illuminator is a shine spray that doubles as a hair sunscreen. All L’ANZA styling products have triple UV protection! (Triple UV means it has broad-spectrum protection that covers all types of UV rays: UVA, UVB, and UVC)

I advise anybody with bleached hair to use deep conditioning masks and treatments regularly. This helps to strengthen your hair and keep it from breaking. Strong, healthy hair retains colour much better than porous, damaged hair. I use this deep conditioning mask every time I wash my hair, and apply a leave in treatment (designed for colour protection) and keratin healing oil (designed to strengthen hair) every single day. I get a tiny trim every time I have it coloured.

Every time you have your hair coloured, you will see a bit less fading than the last time. The colour will build up with each application, and eventually you won’t see much fading at all. Because my hair has been pink for 2 years, I have hardly any fading between appointments anymore.

Why can’t they just make vibrant colours permanent?

I am not a colour chemist, but from what I know, there is something different about fashion colours that makes them much harder to formulate than natural colours. Bright semi-permanent colours are a more recent development in the hair industry.

There are some permanent vivid colours out there, but they are also basically impossible to remove if you want to change your hair. I have had some clients with this type of colour come to me wanting to go back to blonde, and no matter what I put on it, the colour would not budge. Your only options if you want to change it are colouring over it with something darker, or cutting it off.

In a lot of cases, it’s actually good that vivid colours fade out. With my ombré hair, I have a very bright pink for the first few inches at my roots that melts into a pastel pink on my ends. As my hair grows out and gets farther down my head, I actually want that bright pink to fade out to a pastel pink. I’ve had this colour for 2 years. If the colour at my roots from the first application 2 years ago was permanent, my whole head would be bright pink by now! A lot of people with creative colours have multiple shades and tones throughout their hair, or want to change it up quite often. One of my clients gets a completely different vivid colour every time I do her hair.

How do I know if vibrant hair is right for me?

If you’re not willing to commit to the time and money involved in rainbow hair, it’s probably not a great choice. If you like the idea of it but have never had it before, I would recommend starting small with some vivid peekaboo highlights throughout your hair. These will give you a pop of colour without committing to it forever. If you’re already blonde, you could ask your stylist to try out a toner of a pastel colour, like a light pink or purple. I started out with this pastel pink toner on my blonde highlights and fell in love with pink hair!

If you think you can handle the commitment, I absolutely recommend bright hair colours. They look beautiful, they’re so much fun, and they add some spice to your life!

I want to see your vibrant hair!! Tag me on Instagram & Facebook so I can see your gorgeous colours.