Perfect Highlights For Dark Hair

Whoa, this is nice. Look how light this hair is. Oh, my goodness, hello, hair bestie. How are you i'm here with my client mel got ta turn around, so we got ta see how long your hair has gotten, and this is almost two years. Yes, almost two years the hair still looks good. The color still looks good yeah. Today we are gon na. Do something different, don't get scared, but we definitely gon na frame the face. I think less is more now and now we're simplifying it. Okay, sometimes all you need is 20 or 16 foils and boom. That'S it. Let'S get started. So, let's take a look at her natural levels. So this is the new level finder in the new swatch book of gaiteng identity. When you put the swatch level finder next to mel's hair, you can see in the back. She is a natural level three up here. This is all her natural, that's grown out and, as you turn her to the side here in the front of her hair she's a natural level, four, so her hair transitions and it gets lighter around the face frame and that's very normal. Most of us have lighter hair by one level in the front of our face frame, so that tells us a lot about how we formulate we can either start in the back first, where it's darker and then in the front where it's lighter or switch up. Our volume developer, strength of power, so sometimes i'll do 10 volume in the front 20 volume in the back or 20 in the front and 30 and back always amp up the developer power in the back, because it's always darker in the back. So you're going to need more power and the hair around the face is always finer. When you look here, you can see that two years of growth is about this much down to her shoulders and what you're seeing is her old highlights underneath is slightly darker. How much hair are we going to cut off of you today? I don't know: how much are you going to cut off? How much do you want me to cut off? I could literally cut it in half. I have no like this yeah. That'S fine! If you want to cut past your nipples, i don't know about pass, maybe like right at or below, but at the nipple or below the nipple. It depends how much so here, i'm okay with cutting a lot off. That'S a lot! Let'S see, are you okay, yeah? We'Re fine all right: let's do this all right here we go so we're going to cut straight across here. Girl, your hair is thick. These are new sharp shears and scissors. Yeah man is having a tough time cutting through. Oh, it's gone. How exciting? Oh my gosh! I know it's blonde yeah all right. Let'S even out your cut, then we'll get started with the color, so i normally use big nine when dealing with dark hair and trying to get the hair as light as possible to level 10, because mel naturally has a level 3 to four. I'M going to use magnum 8 because i'm not trying to make the hair white. So if you have not used magnum 8, you need to everyone loves magna. Mate 9ma has like the perfect spreadability. It has a lavender tone to it. It'S gorgeous, i'm gon na do about 50 grams and my favorite mixing ratio is one to two. The spreadability of the product is unbelievable and then now i'm going to use 40 volume. I know 40 volume can sound kind of scary, but obviously we're not putting this on scalp we're on brain the hair and doing face frame so throughout the back, i'm going to do 40 volume because she needs that power because it's not near the scalp. It'S off the scalp, so everything that's down here is considered the cold shaft, so that would mean i'll need. A hundred grams of developer now measuring is very important, so make sure you always measure, because if you don't measure you can shift the alkalinity of the product which can affect the lift so you're gon na whisk it up. I'M gon na stir up the magnum eight with the 40 volume developer, always use the delicate developer, because you're gon na get the promise consistency to the product every single time. So now we're gon na add the guy tank collagen powder, so less is more. Her hair is healthy and i want to get as much lift as possible, so you only need less than a quarter scoop. The collagen powder ensures the hair is protected, while you're lifting, because a lot of damage can occur as you lift hair with any product any lightener anytime, you're lighting, the hair. You want to make sure you protect it. Your best friend's going to be the guy tang. My thick body texturizing spray when backcombing, because mel has very healthy, shiny hair, it's so slippery that you can't even back comb it. So when i spray the hair first before doing a backcombing technique, it stays so i'm sectioning, her hair spraying it and it will not affect the lift. It just gives me a little texture to work with. So when i backcomb everything will stay. Put i'm going to divide her hair in half, because i don't want to try to put too much hair inside so starting on the left side. You'Ll see take a thin section here. So take a look. You can see how her hair gets finer as it reached the bottom. It'S more denser up here, that's normal, especially with hair down the nape area, there's more density where the base is as it gets down, it gets finer. What you want to highlight is the length not the short pieces, because if you highlight the short pieces, you're going to draw attention to it and it's going to appear like breakage, because those hair are shorter to the eye, never draw attention to short pieces. I'M going to comb the hair down with one hand you want to hold on to the length so that way, all the length doesn't get pushed back. But when you back comb the hair you're literally pushing back all the short pieces so for maximum diffusion. I lift the hair all the way up and go from underneath push the hair back and then bring the hair back down and push the hair up now. You'Re, creating this huge cushion and make sure you don't bring the highlight way way too high up to the base. You want to bring it about here. So that way it looks like an ombre. So what we're doing is unbring. The nape here is a foil. I'M going to lay it on the board and i'm going to dip into the magnum 8 liner, i'm gon na paint it right on the foil. So there's something for the haircut here too. So i don't have to work so hard with penetrating the hair underneath to lay the foil down rest, the hair right over the top. So now the bottom is already penetrated, and then i get my brush with the magnum eight and just paint from the bottom first. So all of your product is concentrated right on the ends where you want it to and then with the minimum amount of product you still have on your brush. You tilt the brush into a vertical position and feather up creating almost like a w shaped pattern, so that way you get to penetrate all the way through and notice i'm staying away from that base. So that way, you get all the concentration of the lightener on the ends to create an ombre effect. So now you do a foil overlay boom and then you just work your way up to the top, so make sure you take a thin section, not too thick clip this up out the way and again hold on to the length right here: lift the hair up. You see right here with the comb, create that diffusion and again push it up. Look how fine that section is right in through here all right. So in the background nape you can see. I'M done with all eight foils is one two, three four on one side and four on this other side, so a total of eight all together all in the nape area. So i want you to see how cool this is. So you get to turn the board and wheel the board out in a way. Everything is foiled done. So let's drop this down. So i'm going to leave this out and you can see where she has her old highlights that have now become an ombre. I'M only going to do four foils on each side here so that way it connects all the way through so there's a connection, but there's still some low lights in there. So i want you to see what's going on here, because i still have my 40 volume bowl here and i don't have to mix another 30 for around the face frame. I'M gon na skip the face frame and do that last. So i go from the back of the ear into the point of where her money piece is going to be, because i don't want it to be too chunky around her face frame. I want it to look natural, so i go into that point and i can see this is how much i want to leave out or not. Okay, this might be too thin. I want a bigger piece so that i go right through here and i go right back in again and go okay, that's much more like it. So this is going to be the money piece i'm going to hit. So now what i did was i go right behind that money, piece and dissect that right across and leave about an inch out. So this is where i'm going to do my first foil for the back section with the 40 volume, because the face frame i'm going to hit it with 30 volume, because the hair here is a lot lighter and it's finer. So, first i'm going to spray her hair with guy tang, my thick body. So when you highlight this, what you don't want to do is get all the way up to the top of her parting, because when she tilts her head down here, you can see. This is where her parting is. You don't want the foil to be right here, because, what's going to happen, is you're going to be able to see a stitch mark and it's not going to blend. You want the highlights to almost internally pop out, so you want to stay an inch away from her parting, so you can go right from here in the nape. Go all the way up here. Leave out that inch at the top now make sure you take a thin slice, because it is too thick. It'S not going to penetrate all the way through, but you're, going to hold the hair out back comb, the hair and direct the hair back down and back comb right from the center here. So now you get to go up higher. So at this point you get to go all the way up as high as you can so get your full board here, i'm going to grab the foil, the color side underneath and you're going to fold that last quarter inch over that board. So you get to tuck the hair right there. So if you want to get as close as possible to the scalp, what i do is get your comb and then tuck all the back comb right behind that board, just like so and gently hold, and this is where you're going to paint your lightener on. So i'm going to start in the center but notice how the board helped anchor the comb back. So that way you get as close as possible to the scalp without any bleeding, because now everything is clearly tucked away and you can get up as high as possible. That'S really really cool to me. Now you get to untuck the hair, because you already got all the lightener onto the hair that you want. Remove that back comb and you're good to go - and i repeat until i do four foils on this side and four foils on the other side, and you could feather out the ends if you need to or bring them on in. It all depends on what you're trying to achieve here. In many cases, sometimes our ends have low lights, highlights base color because of previous ombres. What i like to do is to make sure it blends. I go in with the rat tail part and pick out the dark pieces, so i don't overlap. The parts are already blonde, so you can see right there. This part is really blond enough. I don't want to overlap that, so i just bring this right on up. So remember because of the back of the flap, i get to lay the board back down and apply the lightener right on that piece. So that way it all connects and blend down. So you don't have like any breakage right down through here, so i just got done following all the back part of the head. We did four foils on one side, four floors on the other side, and then we got the ombre part in the back. So now we're hitting the money piece face frame, so this is the top section. This is where you see that big face framing piece, i'm going to clip that up and out the way - and you want to work the parietal area first. So i'm going to do a parting. Parallel to that section, you can see here. I am going to do about three to four florals back to back till it hits this area and leave this piece out. So i already spray her hair, the guy tang, my thick body. Just so as you work through this section, it's gon na be a lot more easier to backcomb all the way through all right so hold this section and over direct it to the front and, of course, back comb it straight up to the scalp edge. So you can get that money piece really close up to frame her face, so get your foil board and fold the foil over and anchor the foil board end. So you can see that there's a little cushion of a back comb here. So again, if you want to get your comb and tuck nicely right behind that board, this is a cool thing about having the foil board here is that you could anchor right behind and then paint right through the center. Just like so and remember, you hold the hair like this, don't pinch it together in rope, but just kind of make sure it's spread, get your middle finger to hold the board right in the back and then paint just like so and you're able to get really Close up to the route, the scalp this way, because the comb is anchored right behind the board and that's the cool thing about using a full board that you can't do doing freehand backcombing and then bring your finger down and then spread the product right down. The cool thing is: having a board gives you that pressure and also it looks a lot more neat and more professional in the salon. When your clients see you do this, because it's not something they can mimic at home themselves and it makes things, look a lot more neat and more professional. So now you can get that comb out and then you can swirl the ends up and bring that right. On through and paint that and there you have it and now you do a foil overlay and i repeat: i'm just go ahead and overlay the foil right on over the top and then do another section and repeat and repeat until i do about four back-to-back foils. So now we're down to the last section for hair. This is the money piece. This is very important, so i did mix 30 volume for all the face ring because remember the hair is one level lighter is also more finer around here. So i want to show you, as i lift her hair up notice. She has all these little short hairs. These baby hairs do not need to be highlighted. I know a lot of folks that you got ta, highlight all the little tiny pieces and that's great when it's on level eight and nine natural hair. But when you're dealing with someone who is asian, what happens is it looks like breakage and not only that? But you wash out the person's skin tone because now their face blends in with their short hair, so it looks like their forehead, is either bigger or they have breakage around. You want to make sure you leave this as a shadow leave these little guys out. So how i do that usually is i'll shake the hair. When you shake the hair you'll see these little short pieces come out. Let them hang out. You do not need to bring them in. So when you back comb, all of these short pieces will come out. Furthermore, i'm going to do about three to four back to back foils and that's all you need and at the end we're going to shadow root it back down. So again, i'm going to go into a v section here, and this is what we're gon na highlight. So leave this out and you can see how just in between here look at that short hair. She has do not highlight that. Please! It'S not gon na look right so just highlight right around so you're gon na have to do a highlight here and a highlight here, because obviously she has natural short hair. So i'm going to backcomb this. That'S what we're going to highlight over direct this and backcomb that and that's it so now, let's go ahead and bring this in now. This is going to be an interesting section, because all the short hair is hanging out, get your board out repeat the same thing through here and again: lift the hair up. This is going to be different, make sure you spread the hair out. So you see there's a gap here, because this is around her face frame and everyone's hairline is different, so you have to navigate everyone's hair slightly different, so i want to get in close as much as possible, obviously tucking the comb behind. So i could create a nice anchorage here with the application and a nice blend me and mel have a very interesting conversation now. What was your question at first? I asked you what makes you the most happy and then reflecting on what we talked about? It'S just being able to do what you do on your own time, because you can never get time back. You can always make more money, but what are you losing you're losing your time? So i think that's what the main gist of our conversation was just how first work smarter, not harder by being able to save time, because you can never get time back. No, you can okay through quarantine. I have discovered that i have been working very very hard for the last five years. I'Ve been traveling and touring the world non-stop, not taking a break not taking time for myself. Of course, i felt obligated to say yes to everything and i never said no, because i don't want to fail. I work really hard for everything and talking to mel you know. One thing i realized is that you can always make more money, but you can't make more time my dog pass mimi passed away during quarantine, my grandma passed away - and i realized i didn't spend that much time with my family or me me, my dog or my Husband all i did was work because i felt like i had to work. You realize when you have enough, like you're, good you're, good with where you are in life and you're. Happy happiness doesn't equate to all these things that we think are materialistic. What'S on social media, you should be happy where you are, if you're not happy where you are you're, not gon na be happy where you will be, and i know a lot of us out there. I know you probably experienced this too. It'S very important that it's okay to say: no, it's okay to think about yourself. First, a lot of people say: oh stop, being selfish. Think about other people, but the thing is: how can you think about other people? If you don't think about yourself, you have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of other people, because you can't pour out of an empty vessel. I mean they tell you this when you get on the plane, put your seatbelt on first before you try to put seat belts on others right and that's important, because if you're not secure, you can't make other people feel secure. You have to set an example for yourself: you have to take care of yourself before you try to take care of others, and that's the one thing i learned the most throughout quarantine is that if i am not happy, i'm gon na be miserable and then it's Gon na infect everyone around yeah. You definitely are a lot more happier now. I noticed that too yeah even like before i'm like. Oh no, what happened to you, but now like you're, at peace with yourself, you're, loving, what you're doing you exude happiness and that just spreads around the room like if someone's happy everyone's gon na be happy. So i'm here and down to my last section. Oh, my goodness, and we are done we're gon na process, her for 45 minutes and boom, so we're processing, mel's, hair right now and we have a very interesting tradition right. Every time you come see me, i bring you something she always brings, because i know that we barely have time to eat. So i bring snacks for us to eat a lot of snacks. You brought like cupcakes candy rolls for gushers bags of like random chips and candy and all kinds of stuff. So what you got for us today, so i brought different types of chips and then i'm gon na do something healthy, some cuties. This is healthy oranges. Some they're really small yeah, they're they're, small ones, they're cuties, oh they're, extra, sour, no they're, really sweet. Actually, oh thank you and then this is just a bunch of random snacks that i had so oh oreos oreos. I have the harry potter, jelly beans. If you want to do that challenge harry potter, is this a challenge it's where some of them are bad flavors um, but they look like good flavors, so you have to hopefully get the good ones skittles. These are shockers. Oh, oh, sweet tarts! Oh my god! I remember that throwback. These are my favorite, but the stick. Isn'T there anymore? They don't put the stick. This was like lunchbox food that i used to have you said throwback. They make an oreo version. No, i didn't know that different kinds of oreos chocolate oreo. We got the gold golden oreo, yes, are those healthier? I don't know, i don't know, try to be healthy. Okay, the chips, okay and then this is a healthy one. Turkey, turkey, jerky, yeah girl. You see what i mean every time. We have to keep ourselves full. Okay and then this one, this one's the worst one, but it's the best one girl. What did you bring? Oh okay, let's open this, we got ta, i don't know the flavors. I don't remember the flavors, you don't know what flavors, but most of them are like chocolate, because i know you like chocolate. I do love chocolate, um and some of them are filipino flavors too um, and then this is ube ube. I thought that was taro um. I think this is honey, lemon calamansi, um, chocolate, some sort of chocolate, cookies and cream, throw on and for a roche, i'm pretty sure, that's chocolate, sugar, okay! I think it's healthy. What do you think? I think it's delicious. I think you should show that whole thing. I want you to try it too. Okay, here have a bite. We'Re gon na eat this, while we're processing her hair. So we got another 30 minutes and you'll be done and we'll come back and we're going to glaze your hair down all right. So it's been 45 minutes of processing, let's spin it around and we're gon na pull out. This is my favorite part, so let's undo these clips, because i want to see what everything looks like underneath these foils now keep in mind. We did 40 volume in the back and 30 volume around the face frame. It should be all even because remember what i told you, the hair in the back and the outside is away from the body heat and, of course, the face frame. The hair is finer there and naturally lighter, so it should all lift pretty evenly magnum eight look at this. Look at that lift. Oh, my gosh whoa, that's like wider than the level nine. It'S like level, nine and a half. So that's good whoa! This is nice. Look how light this hair is? Oh, my goodness this is so satisfying, especially when you put in all that hard work and to see the lift, lift so evenly look notice how the 30 volume is really really light too. Just like the 40 volume in the back and then we're ready to rinse out and you can pre-tone and glaze it's all up to you, so you can see that mel's hair lifted to a level nine. It looks very beautiful around her face all over the place, but what i want to do is pre-tone her, so i'm going to choose misty muff. This is the guy tang. My identity express toner it tones the hair in five minutes. You can leave it on longer. If you want to the longer you leave it on the more color deposition you're gon na get so usually it ends at 25 minutes. You can get the swatch page here on my dandycolor.com, so you can see that there's eclipse, titanium, pearl, misty, moth, blush golden sand and sandstorm, i'm choosing misty mob here. So you can see. Misty moth is a violet base, there's a gray mauvey tone so that violet cancels out a lot of the yellow in the hair and that little bit of that red from the mauve gives you that beige reflection. So remember violet red you get a smoky beige reflection. So i mixed it one to two ratio: six volume, i'm just gon na massage it throughout her whole head, and this is gon na tone away a lot of the yellow, bring it down. So i'm massaging the express toner throughout all of her highlights and her hair. It will not shift the base because it's acidic make sure you get on there, quick and fast, just like that. We don't want to waste any time just massage it on in you, don't have to pre-tone the hair, but i choose to pre-tone the hair. For many reasons, because when you're working with asian hair, our biggest fear is brassiness, our hair being naturally dark, it likes to revert itself back to being warm pretty quickly on its own and so having more pigment just ensures that it lasts longer and control. All of the brassy tones and that's it and we'll be back alright, so we are back and take a look at mel's hair. The highlights are gorgeous. We pre-tone with misty moth, so remember: misty moth has that violet red gray background, so it ashed out her highlight it mutes it down. So it gives it more of a controlled look. You can see all the dimension through here. We can pretty much stop now and it'll be beautiful, but take a look. Here'S her money piece, it looks gorgeous, but i always want to finish it and finesse the product and make sure it's melted down. So the color lasts for months to come, because i don't see her for like two years a year, hopefully hopefully a year. But when you layer color on color, just like base coat top coat, the same type of concept, you create more dimension, more tone, so especially for clients, you don't see quite often, it makes a huge difference, especially on asian hair, being that it has to be lifted. So high to bring back down, we have to override the red. So the highlights look more muted, where, if someone's naturally born a five or six or seven you don't have to deal with red undertones like asian hair has too so that's why we lift past an 8 9 10 to mute it. So there is no brass! So now i'm going to go in with 7 bb 9 bb, so we're going to do 7, bb demi 9 bb on the ends demi, so it kind of ombres itself down. Bb has a mauve beige type of background to it so because it has a little bit of that cool gray mob. It kind of correlates with the misty moth it's in the same family and the cool thing about the bb series is that it leans. On the cool side, i feel like a lot of beige series can be brassy, but in the guy tang identity collection is very cool tone, because the hair naturally has warmth in it already. So when you're glazing or coloring, the hair, you have to control the warmth, not enhance it, not only control but work with. What'S there, so you get the color you want without adding any more warmth to the hair. That'S already there. So you can see here. I'M applying this right on base and it's not going to shift her base because it's our demi color when you mix it one to two ratio. It'S acidic so always remember to mix it one to two ratio, and the thing is, even though i pre-toned her hair. All over i pre-tone with one color. You can see right here that there is some stitch marks from the highlights. Remember we only did 26 foils only 26 foils, but look at those highlights. Look how beautiful they are because i place them in a way where it's in the angle that you don't see it. So when it's laid down, it's all blended right through here, you don't see the stitch marks, but when you open the hair up now you can definitely see it and die second at different, horizontal positions. This is where shadow rooting, the hair, will help blend it in, and i know you are seeing me apply to dry hair. So when do we tone hair wet and when do we tone hair dry? That'S the question: when you're dealing with hair that you want to retain a lot of brightness and have sheer color deposit, you could tone it on damp hair, but when you're dealing with hair, like mel, where she is asian and her hair is naturally dark and naturally Has a lot of warm underlying pigments that will reoccur. I want to apply to dry hair, so she gets maximum color deposit and maximum longevity. I think that's where a lot of us get confused like when do we apply dry? When do we apply wet anytime? You apply color dry, you have more color absorption. Remember anything that you add water to you're, diluting the pigment. It'S like, adding water to your kool-aid. So anyway, i'm applying 7bb and then after i finish, applying 7bb, i'm going to run the 9bb through her mids and her ends and let her process for 25 minutes and rinse her out and we'll be back. Okay. So now that i'm down to the last formula, this is 9bb, i don't mind full concentration of the pigment. I didn't add any clear to this formula, because i want maximum dilo deposit. Yes, it's going to go deeper, but that's exactly what i want and it's hard to explain because a lot of times when people lighten hair they want it to be obviously like ooh, black and white and super light. But the thing is you override to bring down so then it's muted and controlled and that's the desired tone. So many people with natural dark hair want to achieve. But it's hard to achieve it's going to look so gorgeous when you see it and there's going to be so much dimension and make sure you process for 25 full minutes for maximum color deposit. Now, if you want less dye load, you can add crystal clear to it, so the color doesn't look as deep, but for me the more pigment the better, even though it will appear deeper. It'S going to last way longer and it's gon na look more lush. All right, this is the final result from mel's hair. I'M obsessed, yes, oh my goodness! Well, we took the pass of the 90s with the chunky money pieces brought it back modernize it, making it more diffused around the hairline the face, as you can see it pops and then, when she turns to the side you get that darkness through the back. But you still see the highlight shimmer through you get that ombre from deep within right down through here, but you still see the depth from inside that nape area that depth ensures that it hugs and outline and contour her jawline. So she doesn't look washed out, but she gets to really bring out her length while the color harmonizes, with her natural level 3 4 base. The thing is that when you over highlight the hair - and it's too white like level 10 11 12 next to a dark base, it's gon na look like tiger stripes, so you almost have to marry the color together. So it looks like chocolate, mocha latte, yes, and that's why you get the blonde highlights here, but it harmonizes and not like a zebra, nothing but her hair is healthy and i am obsessed anyway. Click thumbs up subscribe. Follow me on instagram, tik, tok, facebook, yes, and download my music on spotify, itunes, apple, music, amazon everywhere you consume music and definitely purchase all the colors. You see here on mydanicolor.com or armstrong, mccall and cosmopolitan stores. All right talk to you guys soon. My pain is my power. You