4 Services to Cover Gray Roots on Your Client's Highlighted Hair
Not every gray coverage service is simple. When you're dealing with hair with highlights, it can be tricky to camouflage silver strands without losing all that dimension. However, in this guide, we show you four techniques that work to cover gray roots on highlighted hair – from a next-generation root shadow to a reverse balayage. There's a service for every client...
1. Add a Root Smudge or Root Shadow With This Upgrade on Gray Coverage Services
Best For:
- Disguising grays resistant to color.
- Up to 100% gray coverage on hair with highlights.
How it Works:
A root smudge or root shadow is one of the most effective ways of covering gray strands on hair with highlights. Not only does it guarantee full, even coverage, but it also gives the whole highlighted look a more natural-looking feel. And now you can upgrade your root touch-up appointments with a Koleston Perfect Mirror Lights service; lending a luminous yet lived-in look from roots to ends. Every Mirror Lights service relies on three principles:
- A lighter foreground color on the roots at the front for more seamless regrowth where there’s a higher percentage of white hair.
- A slightly darker root color through the rest of the hair, where there are fewer stray grays, so your client won’t have to come in for more recent root touch-ups.
- Flawlessly blended highlights on mid-lengths and ends to give locks a radiant glow.
It's important that the three hues stay within two depths of each other, so you get a softer transition from dark to light.
3 Tips for Mirror Lights:
1. Brush on the Lighter Foreground Color
Start by touching up regrowth through the face-framing layers with Koleston Perfect. Here, you want to use a shade that's darker than the mid-lengths and ends but lighter than the roots through the crown.
2. Apply the Darker Background Color
The root shadow through the rest of the hair should be slightly darker. Paint this through the crown of the head, ensuring it blends seamlessly from the front sections to enhance the face-framing glow.
3. Lighten the Mid-Lengths and Ends
Finish by giving your client's highlights a refresh with fresh ribbons through the mid-lengths and ends. Use a Koleston Perfect color that complements the existing hues. If you need to lift sections, you can also choose a Special Blondes high-lift color.
2. Turn to a Reverse Balayage Technique for Deep Regrowth
Best For:
- A beautiful balayage effect.
- Covering deep regrowth.
How it Works:
If your client's gray regrowth is deep, consider turning their highlights into a reverse balayage. Instead of adding hair lightener to the lengths, like you would with a classic balayage, you work with the existing lightness and darken the root. The trick is to paint the regrowth first, and stroke it right down to the mid-lengths. This way it melts into the lighter color on the lengths and ends, while giving complete coverage. Then, as seen in @christopher_wella's gray blending video, you can tone the existing highlights to give them a quick refresh. This creates a rich color that melts from dark to light flawlessly.
3 Tips for Gray Blending:
1. Choose the Right Color Product for Your Client
First up, find out how intense your client wants their gray coverage to be. If they want complete camouflage, use a permanent color like Koleston Perfect or Illumina Color. Meanwhile, for a softer finish with little to no demarcation line and up to 70% coverage, retouch roots with rich, lustrous demi-permanent Color Touch.
2. Brush Down and Blend From Roots to Mid-Lengths
Starting from the roots, sweep your client's chosen root color down to the mid-lengths. Feather it downwards for a softer, more diffused finish, ensuring you saturate strands to disguise grays.
3. Finish with a Toner to Refresh and Balance
Once the root color has developed and been rinsed out, finish the service with a toner on mid-lengths and ends. This will refresh the existing highlights, while helping the new root color blend more seamlessly.
3. Blend Away Gray Hairs with Fresh Highlights
Best For:
- Maintaining root-to-tip, traditional highlights.
- Blondes who want to blend grays away.
How it Works:
For clients who want to maintain their root-to-tip highlights, have BlondorPlex at the ready. Our revolutionary bond-strengthening lightener will help you lift gray hairs, so you can break up the regrowth and blend silver strays. The goal is to match gray locks to the mid-lengths and ends of the hair, so you'll need to do a double process of lightener and toner to blend those silver hues. If your client already has blonde highlights and their base color is light, blending the gray hairs will be easier. But if the mid-lengths and ends are golden blonde, brown or red, and there are a lot of gray hairs, you may need to alternate new highlights with sweeps of color on the root.
3 Tips for Highlights on Gray Hair:
1. Paint and Foil Highlights From the Roots to Ends
Apply the highlights first. You can lighten with BlondorPlex for a bond-strengthening boost, or Koleston Perfect Special Blondes for lifting and toning in a single step.
2. Assess the Rest of the Roots
If the regrowth in between the foils still has a high volume of grays visible, apply root coverage with a color product that suits your client's end goal. Remember: Koleston Perfect and Illumina Color give up to 100% coverage, while Color Touch gives up to 70%.
3. Blend and Refine With a Root-to-Tip Toner
After rinsing out the color formulas, finish the look with a toner from roots to ends. Choose a shade that enhances the color of the highlights, while blending the root touch-up with the lengths.
4. Embrace Their Natural Hair Color with All-Over Gray Highlights
Best For:
- Transitioning to gray hair color from root to tip.
- Shimmering silver locks.
How it Works:
Clients with a high volume of silver hair through the root section may be ready for a full transition to gray. Think chic, sophisticated and beautifully balanced from root to very tip. Create all-over salt 'n' pepper strands by lifting locks to the correct underlying level, then toning with a hue that's a close match for their natural regrowth. If they have dark hair, a few salon visits may be needed to take them to an all-over gray color. It's a process, but the shimmering silver shades at the end make it worth every second in the chair.
3 Tips for Silver Gray Highlights:
1. Lift Hair From Root to Tip
Sweep highlights from root to tip through the hair with BlondorPlex. You're going to be creating gray blonde or gray brown ribbons (depending on their natural shade), so that when further grays grow through, they blend more seamlessly.
2. Tone with a Gray Blonde or Gray Brown Shade
Mix up hair color formulas that feature gray brown or gray blonde tones. The Koleston Perfect palette features a raft of glistening hues for gray toning, including 9/8, 9/81 and 7/18.
3. Keep Building Up the Number of Highlights
Over your client's next few appointments, keep building up the number of gray brown or gray blonde highlights through their hair. You could even work in a few lowlights in darker shades for a multi-tonal, natural color finish.
With these tips you've got gray coverage on highlighted hair... well, covered. Don't forget to share your 'before and after' shots with us on Instagram by tagging @WellaHairUSA.
