Basics of Hair Color or Hair Dye for Women

Introduction:

Gone are the days when people represented their racial and territorial identities from their hair color. We would see blondes and redheaded women and without a second thought we could tell if they were Americans, Asians or Europeans. With the modernization of every little thing of beauty from clothes to makeup to haircolor, the world has completely transformed especially for women.  

It's completely normal if we want to figure out the concept behind hair colors when their use is becoming so mainstream. Let’s begin with the composition of hair colors! 

What are hair colors made of?

Hair colors are chemicals and pigments that act on our hair in order to change its color. The two main ingredients to prepare it are ammonia and an oxidizing agent which is mostly the chemical called hydrogen peroxide. We normally refer to it as the “developer” or the bleaching agent. 

How the two ingredients work on our hair? 

The color forming process is initiated by hydrogen peroxide. It strips the hair of sulphur, the more hydrogen peroxide is applied, the moresulphur is removed which results in hair getting lighter in weight. Then ammonia performs the function of a catalyst. Catalyst is an agent that helps speeding up the overall reaction. Yes, our hair undergoes chemical reactions that can sometimes be hazardous for its overall health. 

Anyway, let’s return to what ammonia does. It makes the color break intoour hair cortex by separating the cuticle. A cuticle is the outermost layer of a hair. So when the cuticleis separated, the color penetrates in our hair, giving it a new and gorgeous look, provided we choose the complementing shade. Well, it’s also an art and if we think we don’t have a pretty good command in it then perhaps there’s nothing wrong it seeking suggestions and advices.

Hair dye or color?

The title suggests the word “dye” as well. But sadly, hair color is not referred to as “dye” in the beauty industry. It’s accurate to say hair color because we color our hair and don’t dye it. We dye say an Easter egg. Aren’t the two things quite different from each other? 

The Shades

Furthermore, hair colors are of different levels. We denote this level by way of a scale. The scale has levels from 1 to 10, level 1 being the darkest i.e. the blackest shade of black and level 10 being the lightest shade of blonde or anything even lighter. Just the lightest color we can think of comes on level 10.

Then we have different color tones like cool, warm and neutral tones.

• The cool tone includes colors like beige, ash, green, violet etc.
• The warm tone comprisescopper, gold, red, brown, orange and similar colors.
• The neutral tone colors are the ones that are neither cool nor warm. For example, colors like auburn. Or it can be achieved by mixing two colors to get a customized third color.

The categories of hair color

Lastly, we mustn’t skip the following categories so that it becomes easier for us to pick the most suitable type that goes with our need of the hour.

There are temporary, semi-permanent and permanent hair colors. When we don’t want the color to stay for long and want to rinse it away we go for the temporary hair color. And the other two types stay for relatively a longer period of time.

Key Facts and Statistics

• Most of the people in this world have black hair color.
• Only 2% of the world population has naturally blonde hair color.
• 2 to 6% of the people of the United States are redheads.
• When the hair follicles’ pigment cells don’t work properly, the hair becomes grey. The hair-roots’ melanin production becomes slow because of stress or age.
• In the United States, the services related to hair coloring consist of 18% of revenue.
• Around 70% of women in the United States use hair colors.