When it comes to colour work, I do it because I have to, not because I want to, I’d much rather just cut hair. But it’s an important source of revenue for my business so unashamedly I am a slave to the capitalist wheel.

If I have to do it, I am only going to do what I want to do. So instead of reaching for the colour tubes when even the first hint of grey hair appears on one of my clients, I’d rather educate them on the impacts of slapping on a chemical paste directly onto the scalp for forty-five minutes and encourage them to get their haircut regularly instead of obsessing about the colour. For me it’s an easy sell, not least because the products are gross.

Colour products are a concoction of all kinds of different chemicals. I’ve researched many of these ingredients and it makes for some alarming reading. Side effects include burning, redness of the skin, itching, peeling, dizziness, blindness and that’s just what’s been documented on the Rhesus monkeys, poor little buggers, before the products were let loose on the general public.

The marketing since their inception in the early nineteen fifties is equally as ridiculous. Super shiny, luscious, hydrated, silky, the list of adjectives goes on and on, accompanied with scientific jargon about the porosity and density of the hair shaft allowing luminescent colour radiating from the cuticle. What a load of bollocks. The simple fact is the core formula hasn’t really changed. You can tell me there is low ammonia. You can tell me the products are vegan and organic, but the truth is you need the chemical reaction between the colour and the hydrogen peroxide, two highly chemically boisterous products, to make the product work. This is to force the colour into the hair, ‘force’ being the operative word.

And then there is the impact of such products on hairdressers using these products on a daily basis. Listed on every colour product in tiny writing on the sheet of paper that is stuffed into each tube is a list of health and safety requirements. One that is never far from my mind is ‘when mixing this product make sure it is in a well-ventilated area’. Most colour rooms, (not mine) certainly the ones I’ve used in the last fifteen years are stuffy little backrooms with no windows where colourists and hairdressers mix up multiple colours in-between rushing around trying to accommodate their twenty strong column of clients. There simply is no time on a busy day to adhere to any stipulations about the safest way to mix these products let alone anything else.

It’s all the more alarming that the public are encouraged to get their hands on these chemicals to ‘have a go at home’. You only have to walk into your local Superdrug and see the wall of colour products that are available to understand how vast and how inexplicably out of control this part of the industry really is.

If that’s not enough, the environmental impact of these products is blindingly obscene. The industry’s obsession with gratuitous packaging and their inability to move with the times and create more sustainable low impact products is just a small part of the footprint they have on the world, not to mention where on earth do they source their ingredients?

But it’s not just the products that I have issue with. It is also the archaic concept that women are expected to colour their hair. Everyone does it. Politicians, media anchors, pundits and tabloid presenters and obviously vast swathes of the general public. What is it about a woman that goes grey that we don’t trust?. And why is it that when a man goes grey he is distinguished and yet if a woman does the same thing she’s just old. Interestingly the Queen never coloured her hair, certainly not when she went grey.

An example of the resistance that women are up against when they choose not to colour their hair, was never more evident when after lockdown, a client of mine that had been colouring her hair dark brown for twenty years, agreed to stop using colour. Lockdown had given her the perfect excuse to not come into the salon and so she was forced to let it grow out.

Although she was struggling and I could feel the tension through our long text messages about what she might do to mitigate the results, secretly I was satisfied. In the years before lockdown I was always trying to steer her away from the colour she wanted, but I’d had no luck. When she was finally allowed to come back into the salon I took my chance and told her I wasn’t going to do it even if she asked. I reminded her this was the perfect opportunity to try an alternative. I was prepared to give up her business and take a stand against what I believed to be the worst thing I could do for her and for her hair. I could have kept quiet and just taken the money, but I’m way past that. I just don’t want to do it anymore, knowing what I know now about what I consider to be the horror of colour.

So, over the course of a year, I coached her, supported her and reminded her how brave she was to take the step away from using harmful invasive products every four weeks applied directly on to her scalp. It wasn’t easy. Not least because her husband, her associated family even her children were imparting their opinions about how she looked and kept on asking her ‘Why can’t you just go back to the way it was before?’ When I heard her tell me about these offensive remarks from the people I expected to support her, I had to refrain from calling them names in response to their unashamed ignorance about what she was trying to do. I told her to gently remind them about the process she has to go through to achieve the image that they expect of her and I also told her to mention the risks to her health. I could forgive her children because they are probably responding to some other agencies in terms of their opinion. I could forgive her mother and her father being part of a generation that doesn’t really understand change primarily about image. But from her husband ? Someone who in the bounds of marriage is supposed to love her regardless of any affliction. Him I couldn’t forgive.

One morning when she told me that he’d mentioned it again, I think it was the fourth time in about two months I nearly blurted out ‘tell him to go fuck himself’ But of course I didin’t. Instead I spent a year listening to negative vitriol and it came mainly from him. I felt like asking her  ‘if you can’t rely on the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, what the fuck are you doing with him in the first place?.’ Obviously I kept quiet.

Amazingly though, to this day she hasn’t coloured her hair. The opinions have subsided, even her husband has finally shut the fuck up. She looks younger. She’s happier. Her scalp looks better. The condition of her hair is better. She spends less time in the salon and spends less money. But the point is, it should have been a lot easier. It took so much energy to convince her to stop colouring her hair. If there was a more general conversation about the impacts of heavy colour on the scalp from the industry and importantly from the professionals themselves, I think it would have been much easier to steer her into the right direction.

Isn’t it time we began an honest conversation about the very real dangers and commitment that is required when entering into the world of heavy colour ? Alas there is very little appetite for such conversations because it’s not in the interests of the industry to talk people out of using colour. But hear me now. It’s all going to come crashing down. There will come a point when we realise these products have directly affected our health. Sadly only then will we stop using them and by then who only knows how much damage they will have done.

So, in my salon I have come up with a halfway house to accept that people still want colour and also to enable me to stay afloat in these challenging times for small business. I have committed to just highlighting and lowlighting hair. That means if you have a little grey coming through or have never coloured your hair before and want advice and guidance about what to do next ,without the use of colour directly onto the scalp, then I am more than happy to offer up various solutions that will not eradicate the grey completely, but will help reduce the impact of how much grey there is, in a substantiable method that will help make your hair look and feel much more natural.

My skill with colour is most certainly the application. I try to use as little colour as possible taking my time, so when I apply the foil I am meticulous, my sectioning faultless using exactly the same methodology as I do when I cut hair. My sectioning patterns are also individual. After years and years of applications I tend to apply foil where it needs it most and where it will look best, rather than sticking to the rudimentary rigid formula of half head, full head or T section patterning. If i’m highlighting It makes for an effortless, sun-kissed, just come back from holiday colour, achieving a look so natural it doesn’t look like it’s been coloured. It’s this approach that has led me to charge an hourly rate as opposed to every other salon where they charge by the pattern of application.

I’ve never really tried to balayage or to free hand colour. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult in terms of my skillset, but it’s not something that I have experience in or something I desire to offer as a service in the salon. I simply don’t need to do it. My years of experience have given me a working knowledge of toners which is vital in achieving that perfect tone of gold or ash that so many seem to demand. 

So if you’re looking to get rid of your grey hair be advised that I will not apply any colour product directly on to the scalp and that includes bleach. I’m happy to (have to) work with colour providing I’m using foil (packets) so that the products has no direct contact with the scalp or the skin. If you do require full head hair colour, root tint or bleach work I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to do it.

If anyone is interested in any of the themes and points I have mentioned above I have written a book specifically about colour. When I find a publisher who wants to play ball I will post more extracts on my opinion and critique page. Thanks for reading

M