Sun
Fades and warms. UV breaks down the color molecule the same way it fades a beach umbrella. Brunettes go red, blondes go yellow, and both go flat. It is fastest in the first two weeks after a color appointment.
Protecting hair color through a Hamptons summer
A guide from the chair
Color through a Hamptons summer
Sun, salt, chlorine and humidity are all working against your color from Memorial Day on. None of it is a mystery, and most of it is avoidable.
This is what we tell clients in the chair every June. It is written for people who color their hair, but the water and the sun do the same things to hair that has never seen a bowl of color; the fixes are the same, minus the toner.
What the season does
Four things, and what each one looks like
Salt water
Dries and roughens. Salt pulls moisture out and lifts the cuticle, so the surface stops reflecting light. That is the dullness people blame on the color, when it is the hair underneath.
Chlorine
Turns blondes green. It is not the chlorine itself but the copper in pool water, which bonds to porous, lightened hair. It rinses out of dark hair and sits in blonde.
Humidity
Swells and frizzes. Moisture in the air gets into the hair and each strand swells unevenly. Fine hair goes limp, textured hair goes wide. Color is not damaged, it just cannot be seen properly.
Before you go in the water
The five-minute routine that saves the color
- Wet your hair with fresh water first. Hair that is already full of tap water takes up far less salt or pool water. The outdoor shower at the beach is there for a reason.
- Put a leave-in conditioner through the ends. It fills the cuticle before the ocean can. Anything with UV protection does double duty; ask your stylist which one suits your color.
- Rinse the moment you are out. Salt and chlorine keep working as they dry. A rinse at the beach beats a wash at home three hours later.
- Wear the hat. Nothing in a bottle does what a brim does. The parting and the hairline, which take the most sun, are also where color shows the most.
- Wash less, condition more. Every wash lifts a little color. Two or three washes a week with a deep conditioner does more than daily washing with the best shampoo made.
A summer schedule
What to book, and when
Color does not need redoing every month. It needs refreshing in between.
- A glaze every four to six weeks
- Thirty minutes in the chair, from $80. It puts the tone back, closes the cuticle and returns the shine. Most clients who feel their color has faded need this, not a new color.
- Intensive Repair before and after the beach
- A deep treatment, about thirty minutes, $80. Once in June, once in September, and the hair goes into autumn in better shape than it went into summer.
- Keratin before the season starts
- If humidity is the enemy, a Keratin Complex® treatment in May, from $350, takes the fight out of July. It lasts six weeks or three months depending on the version.
- Balayage over foils for the summer
- Hand-painted color has no root line, so the eight weeks between appointments that summer makes inevitable do not show. More on balayage here.
If it has already happened
Three fixes, none of them a full color
- Green tinge on blonde
- The Pre-Art treatment lifts the copper out in about fifteen minutes, $60. Do this before any color appointment; toning over green just hides it for a week.
- Brassy or yellow
- A glaze. It tones and shines in one step, and it is the appointment to book the week before an event.
- Dry, dull and rough
- Intensive Repair, then a blowout. The blowout matters: heat with the right product seals what the treatment put in.
Not sure which one you need? Book a fifteen-minute consultation on its own, at no charge, and your stylist will look at the hair and tell you.
Bridgehampton, New York
Book before the season, not after it
Glazes and treatments are short appointments and easy to fit around a beach day. Open all year, parking outside the door.