 Hello guys, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, hello, welcome. My name's Sam, I am a professional hairstylist and please excuse my appearance. I just woke up and I'm about to hop in the shower and wash my hair, but in today's video I am going to be toning my hair and walking you guys through the process, showing you what I use, explaining why I use what I do. So all of this up here is my natural color and my natural color is like a medium to dark brown, very, very ashy, and then everything down here was lightened at some point. So I used to be blonde last year. I had like a balayage kind of thing going on and then I eventually just covered over it to be a brunette again and I've just been letting it grow out. So that's why you can see everything on the ends here is lighter than my roots, but all of this on the ends, as you can see, gets very brassy over time. I like keeping the dimension in my hair because I feel like if I ever wear my hair in a braid or when I wear it naturally curly or anything like that, it's nice to have like different tones of brown so that it's not just like all flat in one color, but I don't love when it starts getting really warm like this and it looks kind of orange and red and it's also a bit lighter than what I normally like. So I like to tone everything down, make these lighter pieces a little bit darker, still not as dark as my root though to keep the dimension and a little bit more of a neutral tone. That's what we're gonna be doing. First things first though, I'm gonna hop in the shower and I'm going to wash my hair because anytime you're toning, you wanna do it on clean, damp or wet hair and to shampoo my hair, I'm going to be using a clarifying shampoo. This one is from Malibu, their hardwater wellness. I'll be right back. All right, we got our clean towel-dried hair. I just try to squeeze as much excess water out of it as possible so that it's not dripping wet, but you definitely wanna have that moisture in there so that the color takes the way that it's supposed to and I'll explain a little bit more as we're going along, but I have my color in my applicator bottle. I am using Wella Color Touch Five Stroke 71 and I mixed it with two parts, seven volume developer. Make sure that you're reading the directions for the color line that you're using specifically. Some of them are gonna tell you to use equal parts developer, others are gonna tell you to use two times the developer so just double check, but color touch is a one to two ratio. So I have one part color, two parts developer and this color that I'm using is a demi-permanent color. I highly suggest using a demi-permanent and you also want to use a low volume developer. So a 10 volume or lower, you do not want a higher volume developer because that's going to create a lift. I'm gonna squeeze the bottle and give it a good shake and I change up the brand that I use and the actual formula and everything all the time, honestly, like I don't have one signature color or anything like that. So even though this specific color line that I'm using is professional only, if you're not a licensed professional and you're just doing this at home, don't feel like you need to use what I'm using. You can go to Sally's and you can get color there. Just make sure that it's a demi-permanent color that you're getting and like I said, that you're doing a 10 volume or lower developer. So I'm just going through, I find it easier to use an applicator bottle because I can just squeeze the product out section by section and because we are just depositing color and I'm just looking to tone the lighter pieces of my hair, I'm only applying it on like the mid-strand to the ends. I'm not worrying about the roots because those don't need to be toned and those are so much darker anyway. So I'm just going section by section, running it through with my fingers. I would suggest wearing gloves when you're doing this, especially when you're doing a brown shade. It can stain your hands. I just don't have any gloves on me at the moment and just combing it through so everything is nice and even. We're just same thing on this side. So the reason why I'm using a demi-permanent color instead of permanent is because demi-permanent is more of a gloss. It's not going to give a complete solid opaque finish and it's just better for toning because it eventually fades out of the hair so you're not going to get any like harsh solid lines of demarcation like you can with permanent color. And when you're using demi-permanent color, especially with a low volume developer, it's not opening the cuticle up as much so it's not going to make your hair as brassy in the long run. So now that my hair is fully saturated with the color, I'm going to set a timer for 20 minutes. And I wanted to talk about how do you pick the color that you want? So the first number that you see is always going to be the level. You look at a hair level chart. You have one through 10, one being like black, your darkest shade, and 10 being your lightest blonde. Brunettes are going to fall anywhere from level one to six. The pieces that I had that were getting really brassy, those were about a level six. So when you're toning your hair, because we're using demi-permanent and we're using a low volume developer, we're only depositing color. So that means if you're using a toner that is too light for your hair starting out, you're not going to get much results. It's not going to show up. That'd be like if I had black nail polish on and I took like a super, super sheer pink and I just did like one thin layer on top, it's not going to come up true to tone. You're barely going to see it. That black underneath is going to be way more overpowering. So it's pretty similar when it comes to hair. So when you're toning your hair, you want to make sure that you're toning at the level that you're at or darker. So for me, because those pieces were starting out at a level six, I need to tone my hair with either a level six color or something darker. So five is one level darker than six. So that's why I'm going with a level five, because like I said, I don't like for those pieces to be so much lighter than my natural. I want to tone them down a little bit and make them a little bit darker. And then as far as the rest of the numbers here, like I said, the first number is always going to be your level and then anything following that, whether it's numbers, letters, you know, sometimes you'll see like five N or five A or something like that. Everything following that first number is going to be your actual tone. So this, and you can see right on the box it usually will tell you underneath. Keep in mind though, that sometimes the name of the colors can be very misleading. So this color that I just applied, the full name of it is light brown, brown ash. Technically a level five is classified as light brown, but it's not. We would not consider it that. When you see someone with level five hair and you'll see mine at the end, it's more of a medium kind of closer to a dark brown. I know a lot of the times people end up coloring their hair and the result is way darker than what they expected. So just always reference the hair level chart and you can just Google that hair level chart. You can see all of the different levels and that'll kind of help you determine where your level is at and then pick your color accordingly. Don't just go based off of the name on the actual bottle. But if you're looking to combat warmth, then you're gonna typically look for something that is an ash, some kind of cool tone. I will link another video that I did a while back where I really go in depth about toning. So if you're still a little bit confused when it comes to picking your color, check out that video. Hopefully it'll be a little bit more helpful. I'll link it in the description. So I'm gonna let this finish processing. I'm gonna hop back in the shower, shampoo my hair again, condition it, blow it out, and then I will show you the final color. So here is the after of my hair. So you can see there's still the dimension there. It's not just like all one flat solid color, but it's definitely toned down. It's not as light and it's a little bit of a more neutral kind of chocolatey brown, which is exactly what I like. But this is why I said, don't get caught up in the name of the color, because imagine if somebody wanted light brown and this is what they got. I hope that you guys enjoyed this video, learned something, found it helpful. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel. Feel free to go follow me over on Instagram and I will see you in my next video. Bye.