For those who might not be familiar, toner is a hair product that stylists use on recently bleached hair in order to neutralize brassy tones and create a cooler color. Applying a toning gloss with purple and blue hues will counteract the natural yellow and orange pigmentation in the hair strands.
A toner contains typically blue and purple pigments. These pigments counteract the yellow and yellow-orange that is typically present in bleached and blonde hair. A toner uses the principles of the Hair Color Wheel: purple and blue cancel out yellow and orange.
Since purple is the opposite color to yellow, it neutralizes any yellow tones to eliminate any brassiness in your hair. It's as easy as swapping in purple shampoo for your regular shampoo every couple of weeks and allowing to let sit in your hair for three to five minutes before rinsing.
1. Use a Hair Toner for Brassiness. For clients who want their color touched up or their freshly-lightened locks beautifully balanced, a toner is your go-to. Try mixing in a shade with a major or minor tone of color that's /2, /6 or /8.
If your hair is orange, you'll need a blue toner. Try a blue shampoo to tone the brassiness and get rid of the orange. This color toner is commonly needed for darker hair.
To cancel out unwanted brassy orange hair after bleaching, you would use blue color. Blue and orange are across from one another on the color wheel, meaning they cancel each other out.
If your hair is on the yellowish, orange end of the spectrum, purple shampoo will fix it. Like blue shampoo, purple shampoo is another at-home option that's formulated to neutralize brassy yellow and orange tones in color-treated hair. It's primarily used to tone blonde (or lightened), color-treated hair.
As you can see from the color wheel, the color opposite to orange it on the color wheel is blue, as well as blue-green. So the way to neutralize the orange would therefore be to use blue-based colors. Also, for very orange hair, you can add in some ash (which is simply the colorist's way of saying blue-green).
WELLA T18 TO FIX YELLOW TONES
Wella T18 is packed with purple pigments, which will neutralise those yellow tones and leave you with an icy blonde result. The Wella T18 Toner is the only toner of the range that's purple based and it's the most powerful at combatting yellow tones.
Blue based colors and toners are good at killing yellow and they should be your first choice in such situations. Use Ugly Duckling's blue based ash blonde colors (anything ending in "1b"). Blue cancels out yellow on the color wheel.
Use Blue Shampoo and Conditioner
Orange is across from blue on the color wheel, which means the blue pigment in blue shampoos and conditioners can neutralize brassy orange tones in brunette hair. Specifically designed for brunettes, blue shampoo helps knock out brassy tones in brunette hair.
Understanding the importance of the color wheel is important if you want to try toner at home. While salon-level toners are best reserved for the pros, luckily you can now achieve similar results at home with a toning shampoo. “Luckily there are a lot of amazing at-home toner products,” says Papanikolas.
Is purple shampoo a toner? Any product that dispenses pigment to adjust hair tone can be considered a toner, and that includes purple shampoo. Its pigments work to neutralize brass.
A hair toner is a product that helps you correct or personalise your colour. It is used to add natural or more visible tones after a professional colour treatment. As a result, it enhances the tonality of your hair.
DON'T use purple shampoo before your colour appointment
As Anneliese said, it's important not to use purple shampoo in the run-up to your colouring appointment. “Stop using purple shampoo a week or so before you have your colour done,” advises Jimmy.
One product may recommend rinsing purple shampoo off immediately, while another may recommend leaving it on for five minutes or longer. For our Violet Crush shampoo, we recommend leaving the shampoo on for two to three minutes to fight stubborn brassiness.
If you leave the toner processing for too long, you might end up having damaged hair with unwanted purple or blue shades. Why does this happen? Toners have pigments in them to cancel out the yellow and orange tones in brassy hair.
Should I Apply Toner On Wet Or Dry Hair? Your hair has to be a little damp or towel dried while applying a toner. To be precise, you should always use a hair toner when your hair is 70% dry. You will achieve better results if you put toner on damp hair and not dripping wet or completely dry hair.
The most well-known ways to fix orange roots are dyeing them darker, bleaching them once again (for healthy hair), toning them with purple/blue toner, using a hair color remover, or applying natural lightening cures, for example, a 1:1 mix of honey and conditioner.
Blue and blue based colors and toners cancel out orange and yellow orange.
The best way to go from orange to blonde is to re-bleach your hair after two weeks to bring it down to yellow tones that are easier to neutralize. Once you reach yellow tones, you can let your hair be if you are happy with the color. You can also use an ash blonde box dye to neutralize and lighten your hair color.