Lifestyle Choices

The Aniline or Oxidation Hair Colorants

The most permanent (and the most successful), these dyes are included in a number of products for colouring hair such as tinting shampoos, highlighting shampoos, and the single-step and double-step permanent colourants you can buy in packages at the chemist. They are permanent dyes, because the artificial pigment is made to penetrate into the cortex of the hair shaft. There it stays. How this happens is most interesting.

Tiny molecules of colourless dye are mixed with a ‘developer’ such as hydrogen peroxide and then put on the hair. The hydrogen peroxide opens up the imbrications of the cuticle, and the molecules enter through them into the cortex. Once inside, they react with the oxygen from the peroxide (a very unstable substance), which spurs the molecules of the dye to oxidize and combine, forming larger molecules. In the process, these new and larger molecules develop the desired colour, but they have now become so large that they can no longer pass through the cuticle, so they get stuck on the inside. There are more than 50,000 aniline dyes, each different in shade, thanks to slight changes in arrangements of their molecules.

They are potent and effective. They are also potential allergens, since about one woman in ten cannot tolerate an aniline dye without reacting adversely to it. This is why it is important, whenever using a permanent colourant on your hair either at home or at the hairdresser, that a patch test be done first. The anilines can even cause blindness, so they should never be used to tint eyelashes or eyebrows. If you have your hair dyed with an aniline dye, you must wait at least a week before having it permanent-waved or straightened, and you must use a pH- balanced shampoo and conditioner every time you wash it. One of the advantages of the anilines is that tinting limp, straight hair that won’t hold a set can often make it more manageable, since the peroxide in the dye disturbs the cuticle just enough to give the hair some body and eliminate its lankness.

In this category of hair colourant you will find shampoo tints and highlight shampoos, which can be used at home to cover grey if there is too much of it, to lighten hair a couple of shades, to add depth, or to highlight hair that is drab and dull.

You put the products on as you would an ordinary shampoo and then leave them in the hair for a few minutes while the peroxide and dye does its work, and then rinse off. They are simple to use.

The single and double-step tints also fall into this category. They are the dyes most frequently used by hairdressers. If you want to change the colour of your hair dramatically, you should have it done professionally. There is quite an art to colour mixing and application (I know women who literally fly 5,000 miles to have their colour done by someone who is a real master at it). Although there are some excellent products available for home use, if it were my hair, I would still shun them and head for a salon that specializes in colour.

The single-step tints are a mixture of aniline dyes, peroxide, and ammonia in an oil base. They are applied carefully to sectioned hair, starting an inch or so away from the roots and moving to the end. The hair is left to sit for a few minutes and then the root area is done. The hair is rested for another half hour or so. These dyes can change the colour of your hair to almost any other colour, but they are not successful in changing very dark shades to blonde. For that, you need a two-step tint, which bleaches out the existing pigment in the hair shafts in the first step and then adds dye separately in the second. All aniline dyes and bleaching procedures have to be touched up often as the roots grow out, particularly if you change the colour drastically from your normal hair shade. They also cause considerable damage to the hair shaft. If you have your hair tinted with them, you must look after it using a pH-balanced shampoo and conditioner and having a protein treatment every couple of weeks.

Hair Highlight

One of the best and most easily manageable ways of changing your hair colour is to have it highlighted or lowlighted. This involves the same procedures as the single- and double-step tinting, but instead of being done all over your head, they are done only on some strands or areas. Highlighting and lowlighting are particularly useful for older hair that has darkened or faded.

Highlights can bring new life to a head of hair by lightening some of the strands, but they create no harsh lines between the tinted and natural hair at the scalp, as total dyeing does. Lowlights add a slightly darker colour to some strands. They are done in the same way as highlights by wrapping strands of hair in foil- covered bunches, letting the colour develop and then being washed out. Both highlights and lowlights look natural and they leave no hard-edged margins at the roots so they only need to be redone three or four times a year. This means that you don’t need touchups more frequently than every two or three months. There are an enormous number of techniques used in highlighting. Some of the most interesting involve three or more colours put into the hair to give a remarkably natural look.

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