When L first emailed about the hair color she was looking, for I knew it would end up being the most epic hair coloring job I had ever done! In the end, it took more then double the longest amount of time I had ever spent on one person- topping out at 18 hours of hard hair!

L is stoked on her new purple locks, and I’m so proud of them too! Check out our process!

L had epic, beautiful, long, thick, and virgin hair in the first place. I started out doing a virgin tint to achieve the plum/eggplant color using 4.20 L’Oreal Iona color I pulled the color through about half way down her hair, since I wanted to go back in and balayage highlight her hair into an ombre with more ease.

After that it was bleach time!

I used my L’Oreal Platinum Plus lightener and took thin sections to balayage. Then it was heat time. We rinsed and got the highlights to a level 8/7. It was still pretty brassy, so we did some test strands with the finial Pervana ChromaSilk color and concluded that it was not light enough and would need a second round of ombre balayage. The results after this were much better, but L's hair was definitely pushed to the limits!

I used my Fiberceutic emergency hair conditioning treatment to stop any breakage from occurring, and gave her hair a quick trim. L's hair was still in good condition, but it needed a rest At this point we had been doing her hair for 11 hours straight! We rescheduled a second appointment to do the magenta/lavender/lilac part of the ombre.

For the follow up appointment, I did a straight tint over the highlighted parts of L's hair, starting with the magenta. Then, I blended the color into the lavender/ lilac color. I spent so much time taking small sections and being sure to saturate the hair as well as I could, blending the color on her hair to create a nice transitional ombre. We rinsed and dried to discover that her mid shaft was still not where it needed to be. It looked a little mauve. Argh...

The lesson learned was this: the more I rubbed to saturate the highlight, the less it stuck. So, we set another appointment to specifically address the mid section of L's hair. This time we used another mid toned shade of magenta and lavender. And, it worked. One of the ironic things about L's hair was that in the rinsing, the ends of her hair became more lavender/ lilac. So I think that the darker color at the top rinsing through the ends will fade better because it refreshes the ends a little. Cool.

The brighter color I used to get the medium magenta purple is 1/2 Wild Orchid + 1/2 Lavender. The lighter color I used is 7/8 Lavender + 1/8 Wild Orchid (without the orchid it looked a little grey). All product used to create the cool color is Pervana ChromaSilk.

And...