This Color Melt is the Secret to Multi-Dimensional Hair

A Color Touch Melt is just what it sounds like; a seamless blend of vibrant shades that melt together, enhancing the natural highs and lows in your client’s hair. On the opposite end of the spectrum to chunky highlights and colour blocking, this technique is all about zero-streaks, natural-looking brushstrokes. It's also an upgrade on full-head, uniform colour, veiling strands in an ultra-personalised scattering of hues.

The trick with a Color Touch Melt is to use three to five shades that enhance one another. So, for example, if your client is working ash blonde locks, you may want to introduce ash brown ribbons, hints of gold, or tinges of honey. The hues are painted through the hair in alternating ribbons to boost dimension. Then they’re combed and blended to blur the lines, resulting in a glowy, dimensional mane.

For a Wella Color Touch Melt, we love using demi-permanent Color Touch. It has a colour portfolio of 90+ intermixable shades that deliver vibrancy and shine, no matter the hues you choose. From reds to blondes to brunettes to bolds – every trend and hair goal is covered, and finding five complimenting colours is easy with such an extensive range of warm, cool and natural tones.

Our iconic demi-permanent hair colour also gives you up to 70 percent grey coverage*, so if your client wants silver strays to be seamlessly blended, you can delicately sweep them away. Plus, it fades true-to-tone over 28 washes, so locks appear fresh and vibrant from one appointment to the next.

While both looks rely on seamless blending to enhance highs and lows through the hair, the way a Color Touch Melt and balayage are painted sets them further apart than you’d think. Let’s look at the differences…

A Traditional Balayage Features:

• Lightened hair with freehand painting, focused largely through the mid-lengths and ends.
• Typically a darker root area, with lighter shades swept through the hair.
• Higher contrast, so the sweeps of balayage stand out against the base.

A Color Touch Melt Features:

• A personalised palette of 3-5 shades, chosen to suit your client's preferences and skin tone.
• A darkened root with one shade, while the other shades are painted in alternating ribbons through the lengths and ends.
• Melting of the shades for seamless multidimensionality, light reflection and colour vibrancy.

A Color Touch Melt is ultra versatile. It works through all hair types, from straight to wavy to curly, as well as all hair lengths, including short hair. Any base colour suits the trend, too. Dark hair can be enhanced with glittering strands of bronze, bronde and chocolate, while lighter hair turns fall-ready with hints of light brown mocha, pumpkin spice and vanilla ash tones. You can even create blends for bold colour lovers. Give fashion tones a melted twist by teaming, for example, an electric blue hue with navy, black, cobalt and sky blue ribbons. This season is all about low-contrast looks, and a Color Touch Melt delivers while still lending locks movement. And with Color Touch as your demi-permanent colour of choice, you get a glossy finish every time.

Defining the Palette

One of the most vital steps in creating a Color Touch Melt is choosing which demi-permanent shades to use. Have your Wella colour chart ready to help you and your client pick out the dreamiest blend of Color Touch hues. You'll need a minimum of three and a maximum of five to achieve a dimensional veil of vibrant colour, and they can be up to five depths apart. You can even mix blondes and dark browns for subtle contrast.

You don't have to stick to one tonal direction either; use a combination of warm, cool and natural hues, so the hair gleams with health. Playing with a variety of tones also helps you mimic natural colour, which is rarely one-dimensional. If your client is a bit colour shy, embrace a more natural hair palette of blondes, browns or reds, but if they want a show-stopping look, pastel and bold colours can also be melted together.

Here's an example of how cool and warm, and light and dark tones can melt into one creation, giving a brunette mane a light-reflective wash of colour with lustrous shine...

Applying the Colours

You can apply your client's colour blend to pre-lightened, already-coloured or natural hair, so if lifting is required, add highlights with BlondorPlex before you melt their mane. Then, start painting with the three to five chosen hues. Color Touch can be swept through clean, damp hair for a softer effect, or applied directly to dry hair to up the vibrancy.

When deciding which colours to paint and where, try to avoid following a pattern. Instead of going from light to dark, mix and match the placement of each shade, as well as the width of ribbons. Sweep colour from root to tip or, if you're adding a root shadow, from mid-lengths to ends. To give your client's skin tone a glow, focus the lightest hues nearer the face.

Consider the effect you want to create with your colour process too. If your client wants more defined ribbons that give the illusion of added length, section the hair vertically before you start painting. But if they want a glossy-looking colour that's extra seamless, create diagonal sections and overlap the shades as you sweep them through the hair.

Melting the Shades

Now for the fun part: melting. Once you've finished painting shades all through your client's hair, allow them to develop for up to 20 minutes. In the final five minutes of developing time, grab a wide-tooth comb and glide it from root to tip, section by section. This simple step blends the pigments together for a majorly melted coating of colour. Then, rinse and shampoo as normal. Locks will gleam with health.

If your client has a high volume of grey hair that they want to completely cover, team their demi-permanent hair colour, Color Touch, with a permanent salon colour, like Koleston Perfect. Because both products have a similar level of shine and vibrancy, they're perfect partners for creating a melt that hits every one of your client's hair goals.

Use Koleston Perfect for their root shadow, so you get up to 100 percent grey coverage where it counts most. This iconic colour formula also gives you up to five levels of lift with the right volume developer. Then melt Color Touch through lengths and ends. The demi-permanent formula will refresh even porous locks with limitless shine and a vibrant colour coating that's gentle on damaged hair.