Create Beautiful Hair Highlights at Home Part 2

Marco Pelusi, Stylist at Marco Pelusi Hair Studio:

So as you can see we freshly shampooed the highlights and don't be afraid when you first shampoo your highlights, they are kind of an ugly, brassy, orange-y color. The most important thing is to get an even highlight, which is why I want you to use a foil-like situation because we did get a really nice even highlight and it's going to look fantastic.

Now what we are going to do is finish drying it. That's what you can do at home. Just take a blow dryer and dry it. And now we are going to apply our toner. I've chosen a level eight natural toner, which you can easily buy at a drugstore or if you are at a beauty supply store you can ask for it. Literally you can look at the shade you want and buy it and put it on. After you highlight hair with lightener, you can pretty much get what you pick as a toner. So I'm going to go ahead and dry this so we can apply our toner.

So now what I'd like to do is show you how easy it is to mix the toner. Again as I said, if you've lightened your hair with lightener and you've gotten it to the level of lightness that you want, you can pretty much select and buy a toner that looks good, mix it and apply it. I would highly recommend using a demi-permanent or semi-permanent as a toner, so you can be free to put it anywhere you want and it will only cover the highlights. If, for some reason, you purchase permanent color and use it as a toner, you might disrupt the rest of the color on your head. You don't want to do that.

So this is a really gentle, no ammonia, demi-permanent toner. It's a level eight which is what we wanted. I think when you are going to apply your toner, you are going to definitely want to wear a big old towel so that you won't spill anything on any of your clothing. I think it's important to apply the toner away from your face because you don't want to get any color ever in your eyes. So, I am simply going to apply the toner to the highlighted hair.

One thing that is very important when you are doing this application is to be very thorough as to cover all of the highlighted hair. You want it to be even and you want to cover every section that was highlighted in order to get the beautiful hair you're after. Thoroughly saturate each highlighted section so that you get a nice even color result when you're done.

With our model's hair today, I selected using a toner. I had a feeling it was going to be a little brassy because of how dark her hair is. If your hair highlights and lifts and you like the color then you don't have to use a toner. You may not need what is known as a double process especially if your hair is lighter to begin with. So what I'm going to do is continue applying the toner to the entirety of the highlights. Then we are going to let it process somewhere between ten and twenty minutes. Again, I think it's important, especially if you are at home, to keep an eye out for the tone. If you can't see it, take a dry towel and wipe off a bit of the toner and see if you like the shade. Then we will shampoo this out again and see the finished results.

So it's so exciting, as you can see. We completed the process and we've achieved our desired beautiful hair. The toner was able to take out a little bit of that unwanted brassiness that we had after the highlight, which you could experience at home as well. We only left the toner on for a few minutes, about eight minutes. I eyeballed it and took it off and shampooed it.

Something that's really important for you at home is to maintain your hair with the proper color care. You want to use a product that is specifically formulated to maintain the color that you just did. One thing to keep in mind is to not to highlight your hair too often at home. We don't want you to do this on a repeated basis. If you do experience any problems such as breakage or dry and brittle hair or if you have any questions about this process, whatsoever, consult a salon professional. Thank you.