How To Remove Brassiness and Colour Correct At Home

Brassiness is a problem that everyone who lightens or colours their hair struggles with. You are not alone and you can fix the brassiness at home!

When you see brassiness in your hair, what you're seeing is the underlying pigment. The more you understand about that underlying pigment, the better you'll be able to fix the problem. The picture above shows hair levels, and the underlying pigment of that level.

The colour wheel below shows the different hair levels, and the underlying pigment at that level.  You can use this tool to get the hair you’ve always wanted - perfectly brass free!

Let's colour correct your hair!

STEP ONE: Using the colour wheel above, find the unwanted tone you're seeing in your hair. Eg: yellow, orange, red or a mixture of those tones.

STEP TWO: Look at the opposite colour to the unwanted tone you've selected. Eg. If you're seeing unwanted yellow tones, the opposite colour would be purple. This colour will cancel out/neutralise the unwanted tone you're seeing.

STEP THREE: Choose a product which contains the opposite colour to the unwanted tone you're choosing. This is super important! If you've ever used a purple shampoo because you thought it would cancel out brassiness, but you had orange brassiness, you would have found the purple shampoo did nothing. In this scenario, would have needed a blue shampoo.

IMPORTANT NOTE: One important thing to remember - when you're cancelling out unwanted tones you can only do this at the current level of your hair, or darker - products designed for a lighter level won't work. The levels are shown on the very edge of the colour wheel above. Hair products use hair levels to name their products, so you can easily see which level they will work on! (Eg. 10A, 9A, 8A etc.) Level 9/10 hair can also use the level 12 products, as these just mean they will also provide a slight lift while keeping you at a level 10.

FOR A COOL ASHY SILVER BLONDE: If you were looking for a cool ashy silver blonde, you would need to lighten to a Level 9-10 which would expose the yellow pigment in your hair. Then you would use a purple based product to neutralise that yellow, and give you an ashy blonde.

FOR AN ASHY BRUNETTE: If you were a level 7 dark blonde / brunette, you would cancel out the orange tones you see in your hair by using a blue based product.

Below is a list of products sorted by their neutralising pigments!
Products can be mixed together if you're seeing a variety of unwanted tones. You can also mix shades together if the levels of the colours listed below are too dark for your desired colour. For example, you could mix Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colours in 12A & 7AA to get rid of red orange tones in level 8 hair.

PURPLE
Wella Colour Charm Toner in T18
Wella Colour Charm Toner in T11
Wella Colour Charm Toner in T35
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 12AA

BLUE PURPLE
Wella Colour Charm Toner in T10
Wella Colour Charm Toner in T14
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 10A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 9A

BLUE
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 12A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 8A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 7A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 6A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 4A
Wella Colour Charm Demi Permanent Colour in 10NA
Wella Colour Charm Demi Permanent Colour in 8A
Wella Colour Charm Demi Permanent Colour in 7A

BLUE GREEN
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 6AA
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 3A

GREEN
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 7AA
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 5A
Wella Colour Charm Permanent Colour in 5AA

Colour correcting can be a bit of a science, so just remember that personalised help is always available!

Head to the contact section of this website, or email orders@tintdepartment.com.au