Friday, January 12, 2007

4 tips for making fine, limp hair beautiful

Fine hair does not have to be limp and lifeless. Follow these four steps to put body and beauty back into your fine hair.

Usually if a person’s hair is limp and lifeless, you can blame it on genetics because this hair problem is usually a result of the person having fine individual hair strands (not to be confused with thin or thinning hair). But even if genetics has dealt you a bad hand in the hair department, you don’t have to put up with it. It is possible to transform lifeless hair into full bodied voluminous hair. Here’s how:

1) Choose your shampoos and conditioners carefully. Any product that claims to add moisture is probably the wrong product for you. You don’t need a product that leaves behind a heavy residue because these will only make limp locks look more flat. Look for lightweight or clean rinsing shampoos and conditioners and use them everyday to wash away excess naturally occurring scalp oil. Your hair could also benefit from the use of a conditioner that contains proteins which will help thicken up fine hair.

2) While you style, add in a product that is formulated to thicken or volumize hair and a texturizing product. The volumizing product should be applied at the root to give hair instant lift. When hair doesn’t lay so flat on the scalp, it gives more body and lift to your hair. The texturizing product helps roughen up the naturally soft and smooth texture of your hair to help the hair take and hold styling attempts better. This is useful if, after heat-styling, your hair looks completely flat by mid-morning.

3) Adding body no longer means teasing. Teasing is sloppy and causes tangling so don’t do it just for the sake of body. If your hair is naturally pretty smooth, you can wrap damp hair around Velcro rollers and either let it air dry or, for a speedier approach, blow dry it around the rollers. If you’d rather not mess with rollers for fear of tangling, use a wide barreled curling iron to get the same look. Using an iron will also give your hair a smoother look that it might have if allowed to air dry. We all thought crimping was a thing of the past, but actually that old crimping iron has a use. Separate your top layers of hair from the very bottom. Twist the top layers up on top of your head and fasten them out of the way. On the bottom-most layer of your hair, the ones that no one will be able to see, crimp the first couple of inches of your hair nearest to the scalp and you now have a quick, tease-free way to plump up your locks.

4) A long hair cut with long layers makes limp hair too heavy. For instant lift, make an appointment with your hair stylist and ask for a shorter, layered ‘do. Choose a style that sits at or above the shoulders because fine hair that is any longer than shoulder length will be too weighted down and unable to swing, move and bounce around the way hair with body should be able to.

Written by Angela McKendree - © 2002 Pagewise

How to remove hair color after disasters

Read on for tips and ideas on how to remove hair color after a hair dying disaster.

Uh-oh. Some how the hair color you have been dreaming about went wrong. It may be too bright, too dark, or it simply is not the color you wanted. You hate it so much you cannot bear to walk out of the house with such a disastrous color on your head. Perhaps, it is the colorist’s fault, or maybe you were the one who turned your head into a monster. Well, the first thing to do is to accept it. Your hair is in a bit of a funk, but time and patience can help correct it. The second thing you can do is to avoid making drastic decisions such as trying to fix or hide the color by applying more hair dye. This will only create further problems such as hair breakage and/or hair loss. Next, stop placing blame. No matter who is to blame, you cannot go back in time. The only solution is to move forward and to try to repair it best as you can.

If a professional colorist at a salon applied the color, return back to the salon as soon as possible. The colorist should be able to correct the mistake that caused the hair color to go wrong. However, they will only be able to correct a mistake caused by them. If the coloring process went wrong because of something you did, they may not be able to correct the mistake. Usually, the salon can correct the problem at no additional charge to you. It is always a good idea to use the same colorist who colored your hair. Keep in mind that correcting bad hair color does not and will not happen over night. The correction process can take up to five visits to the salon to correct extremely disastrous hair. Time and patience are two things you must have if you want to get through this.

A lot of people choose to color their hair at home using a home coloring hair kit, instead of having it done professionally. If home coloring was the method you used and the end result turned out to be something different from what you expected. The problem can probably be fixed as well. However, correcting at home color can be very hard, especially if a permanent hair dye or bleaching product was used. The best option for correcting at home color is having a professional work on your hair. If you want to try to solve the problem yourself there are some things you can try to correct it. If the hair color used was a light to medium shade, you may be able to cover it with a semi-permanent hair color after a few days. If you used a very dark shade such as black, then you might as well live with it. Dark hair color disasters are very hard to correct because the pigments in the dye are very strong. Now if you do decide to try to cover the damage, call the manufacturer of the product first. They will be able to assist you in covering the color. Only professionals should use products designed to strip color from the hair. These products are not recommended for consumers unless they know exactly what they are doing.

Sometimes the answer to color damage is simple solutions. If your color damage was caused by chlorine, that turned your shade to green. A special chlorine removing shampoo can be used to remove the green hue from your hair. If that method fails to work you can try soaking your hair in tomato juice which will neutralize the green hue. Another solution to color damage is fading the color. This helps especially for color damage that is too bright. Heat, different types of shampoos, and various hair styling products can all cause the hair color to fade. Time and patience again is the key. The color will not fade instantly, but given enough time it will.

The main thing to remember when dealing with a disastrous hair color problem is to learn from it. Mistakes happen. If you are unable to correct the problem, remember its just hair. The color will eventually grow out or fade on its on. If you want to speed up the process, you can always have a stylist cut it into a flattering style. You can also use this time to accessorize your hair and try out different styles. Be smart in the decisions you make about hair coloring and hair color correcting. It is better to have a head full of orange hair than a head without hair.

Written by Makita Johnson - © 2002 Pagewise