Color Boost: Safely Dying Chemically Relaxed Hair

Hair color has the power to make us sad, happy, match how adventurous we’re feeling or make us feel demure & sexy. Although HKI prefers Rihanna’s black phase, she balked at safe and rocked “in-your-face” bright red hair in 2011, while in sharp contrast, Ms. Angela Bassett wowed us with subtle brown highlights that accentuated her chocolate complexion.

For those of you looking to emulate RiRi’s red, don’t do it on the cheap! Safely dying chemically relaxed hair is important to keeping your hair healthy. Leave hydrogen peroxide [a bleaching agent that preps your strands for your new hair color] to the professionals who know how to use it or you may end up bleaching yourself bald. Why? Because peroxide weakens the hair shaft and could result in significant hair breakage. Not on my watch ladies!

Let’s make a deal…you leave the bottle of hair peroxide to the salon professionals and HKI will clue you in on 100% reliable, at-home hair color products that won’t damage your hair and are peroxide-free…

Bigen Permanent Hair Color ($6.49, beauty supply stores) is an affordable permanent hair color line created with no ammonia and requires no hydrogen peroxide to deliver incredibly rich and natural color in spades, especially if you’re trying to cover up your grays. So how long does the color last? The color lasts for what seems like forever, but you should plan on reapplying every two months or so. Impressive indeed.

If covering grays are your primary concern, then cover them 100% with Dark & Lovely’s Color Confidence($6.99, participating drugstores) permanent hair color. You might become a fan of this product because of the coverage you get and because it conditions your strands as you use it and adds a brilliant shine to boot.

Now the concern is how to keep your new hair color in tact through weekly shampoos and keep it conditioned so it doesn’t break off – that’s easy…

Try a color-protectant shampoo like Infusium 23 Color Defender Shampoo ($5.89, participating drugstores) which keeps your hair from fading because it’s free of harsh detergents (also known as sulfates) and is infused with pro-vitamins, proteins and amino acids that helps seal in and protect color vibrancy and brilliance.

To keep your tresses properly conditioned, the affable founder of OPI Nails, George Schaeffer enters the hair color category with Aloxxi International – an amazing line of products which inlcudes Colour Rich Treatment Masque ($25, salons only). This conditioner goes beyond what normal conditioners do and nourishes your hair at a deeper level because it contains 10 botanical nutrients to protect & moisturize and exotic butters of Shea & Cupuaca to strengthen and repair each delicate strand.