Adding Highlights Over Color
Is it safe to add highlights on top of permanent, allover color?
It's safe, but also unpredictable. That's because the first chemical process -- usually a combination of what professionals call lift (removing natural color), deposit (adding new color) and tone (colors like red, gold and orange that give personality to hair) -- will invariably affect the second process -- either processing time or color result. If you want to avoid this unpredictability, you may want to try hair color and highlighting kits formulated to work together. Excellence Creme, a hair color kit, works with Excellence Cremelights, a highlighting kit. There's also Couleur Experte, which coordinates hair color and highlight kits into a single box.
Blonde Color for Olive Complexions?
I have always wanted to try blonde hair but everyone advises me against it because I have olive-toned skin. Will blonde hair make my skin look green?
When it comes to choosing hair color, how dark or light your skin is matters just as much as how dark or light your hair is. But tone -- that kick that gives personality to skin and hair -- is also incredibly important. I find that women with warm undertones in their skin (golden or olive) look best in warm hair colors (gold, copper, bronze, etc.), while those with cool undertones in their skin (rosy) look best in cool hair colors (ash, iridescent, etc). Many women (wisely) choose not to lighten their hair too much, as the contrast can create an unhealthy glow if the results are too brassy or greenish. So to answer your question: Blonde hair may look great on you. But it may also wash you out. Or make you look green. It depends upon the blonde. I don't know what your hair color is, but I'm going to assume it's quite dark. Why don't you indulge your desire to go lighter without necessarily going blonde? There are new at-home hair color products that enable very dark-haired women to go much lighter, into a cool-light-brown territory, without brassiness. You may want to try the True Brunettes collection from Preference, or the Hi-Lift Browns collection from Féria.
