7 Ways to Fake Fullness with Color
Get more volume with color. (Photo: Trunk Archive)
You can fake a lot of things, but full, thick hair? That’s more of a challenge. There are tons of products on the market that help amp up volume, but it turns out color can actually be the key to making your hair look more lush than it is. A simple color appointment can render all of those bottles taking up real estate in your bathroom totally unnecessary. Here’s how to incorporate color to yield the illusion of pumped up strands.
Help Yourself To Highlights
Sally Hershberger Downtown colorist Dana Ionato notes that highlighting your hair actually expands each strands’ diameter. “The lightener used for highlighting actually blows out the cuticle and amplifies it,” she explains. It gives your hair a new texture, almost a beachier wave. A single process, conversely, smooths the cuticle. “This color process opens the cuticle, deposits color and then seals it smooth, so it’s shinier, but flatter,” Ionato says. One trick she shared for those with dark hair is to ask for highlights at the root “before dyeing it back to brown to expand the cuticle for the long haul.” This imparts lift off of the scalp. “If your hair is limp or thinning at the root, the eye will look at the lightest point of your head, so highlights painted on at the bottom will take the spotlight off the top and help you disguise thinness and make it look fuller,” she suggests.
Dark Shadows
Celebrity colorist Rita Hazan uses a technique called shadowing. “If you keep the underneath layer darker and sprinkle highlights on the top, you are creating depth and dimension where there isn’t much,” she explains. That multi-dimension in the interior of the hair from the middle of the head down creates a more robust effect. “You need the darkness to create a shadow effect,” she notes. She suggests vegetable dyes as well to darken the hair to make it look thicker. FOr a quick fix, Rita Hazan Root Concealer can add the illusion of thickness, while camouflaging thinning hair along the part.
Go Bronde
Lead colorist at Oscar Blandi Salon, Kyle White advocates for “bronde” — a shade that’s not quite brown, yet not quite blonde. Bronde restores the contrast to the hair and makes light eyes pop and complexions glow. He explains that “the waves of lightness and darkness also trick the eye into seeing depth – creating the illusion of fullness.”
Powder It
Hairlines and parts lose density as we age, so Paves suggests turning back the clock by applying a colored powder like Color Wow around the hairline. “Get it on there, Eddie Munster-style, and blend it,” Paves says. It’s waterproof and yields the effect of thicker hair instantly. He frequently uses this trick on his celebrity clients.
Mimic Freshly Colored Hair
If you can’t get to the salon, you can still fake the amplified texture of your freshly colored hair. Test out John Frieda’s 7-Day Volume, an in-shower treatment that won’t leave hair oily the way some volumizing stylers can. Celebrity stylist Harry Josh says that “when you blow-dry freshly colored hair, the day after, it has more lift on that day than it will for the whole month and we’ve recreated that effect.”
Related:
Highlights are Back: Celeb Stylist Tracey Cunningham Shares Her Color Hair Tips
