Had a stylist tell me I was overthinking my color mixing

Last week at a supplier meetup in Cleveland, a stylist named Diane gave me a real earful. She said I was wasting time trying to match every single shade from a fashion magazine instead of working with what the client's natural base gives me. At first I got defensive, but then she showed me some of her own work. She does the opposite of what I was taught. She uses one color family and just plays with levels, not a dozen different tubes. It hit me different because her results were so clean and consistent. Made me wonder if I have been overcomplicating things for years. Has anyone else reconsidered how they approach formulation after seeing a simpler method work better?

2 comments

2 Comments

alicec8625d ago

Respectfully, I gotta push back a little here. More tubes don't mean muddier results if you actually understand how each color is working with the client's natural melanin. Diane's method is fine for clean, predictable work, but sometimes you need those extra tones to correct for porosity or a previous color you didn't put in. I've seen too many "simple" formulas turn a weird shade of green on someone with old metallic dye or box color buildup. Not every head is a blank canvas, and sometimes you need more than one color family to get out of a hole. Simple works great until it doesn't, and then you're stuck with a client who has muddy hair and no backup plan.

anthonyhunt26d ago

Man I gotta tell you, I read something similar in a trade blog just last month and it shook me up too. The article was about how most stylists are trained to think more tubes equals better control, but the really seasoned ones know that too many colors just muddy the result. It made me think about how many times I've been chasing a specific violet or copper tone when my client's natural level 8 base was already giving me half of what I needed. Diane sounds like she figured out that simpler formulation actually gives you more consistent results across different hair types. Like she cuts out all the guesswork and just works with what's actually there. How many of us are just throwing extra pigment at problems that don't even exist?