If you’re wondering what the secret is behind a hairstylist’s ability to take your freshly bleached, yellow hair and turn it into a beautiful, cool-toned icy blonde it’s toner! Toner is used for getting rid of the unwanted shades in the hair by neutralizing them with their opposite colors.
The most common type of toner is a demi-permanent toner, which along with a semi-permanent toner is usually used on hair that has already been colored in the past. Similarly, to get rid of yellow tones in your hair, you will use a purple toner, and to get rid of the orange, you will use a blue toner. Applying this principle to hair toners would mean that for example, if you have a lot of red tones in your hair that you need to get rid of, you would use a green toner because green cancels out red. One of the most basic rules of the color wheel is that the colors opposite each other on the wheel cancel each other out or neutralize each other. The key to understanding which toner to use lies in the understanding of the color wheel and the levels of hair color.
You can’t just go to the market and pick out a random toner and expect that to fix your dye job.
Toner comes in to fix these problems, as it will not only fix the shade of your hair but also add some of the shine and hydration back into it! How do I know which toner to use for my hair? When you bleach your hair, you’re left with very scraggly and dry looking, brassy colored ends, especially after multiple rounds.