 Step one, just don't do it. Just kidding. Hi guys, welcome back to my channel, or if you're new here, hello, welcome. My name's Sam, I am a professional hairstylist specializing in hair color, and today I'm gonna share with you how to use box color correctly. You might be thinking, huh, I've always heard that box dye is terrible for your hair and you should never use it. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why professionals advise against using box color. And despite popular belief, it's not just because we want you to come to us so it puts more money in our pockets. It really just isn't great for your hair. There's a lot of harsh, cheap ingredients in it, and I mean, you can just tell the difference. When I look at someone, I genuinely can tell from across the room if they have professional color or if it's box color, just because of the way that it makes the hair look. It can start to look very dry and just very opaque, and there's just no dimension to it at all, and it just looks very harsh and very unnatural, and it really isn't the best stuff. And it also can be tricky to get the exact results you want. When you come into a salon and you go to a professional stylist, they're gonna talk to you about your hair history and your goals and look at what color your hair is now, what level are you at, and then they're gonna go in the back and they're gonna formulate a custom color for you. There's a lot of mixing that goes involved. It's not just like, I want that color, you pick that color, and you put it on your head. There's more that goes into it. I, of course, highly suggest that if you have the means and are capable of going to a salon and getting your hair colored by a professional, that is, of course, always going to be the best option. However, I am not naive to the fact that people are still using box eye on their hair, and there's nothing that I can say that's gonna stop them. They're gonna do it because they want to, whether they just wanna save some money and they want to do the cheap option, or some people have anxiety about going into a salon. Whatever the case may be, I would rather, if you're gonna use box eye, I'd rather share these tips with you and help you use it in a way that's going to give you better results and help your hair in the long run. And I know I'm gonna get some shit from other hairstylists out there, but I look at it the same way as like teaching an abstinence only sex ed program in a school, right? Like that's proven to not be effective. People are gonna do what they wanna do anyway, so we may as well teach them how to do it safely. Is that a weird comparison? I don't know. So my first tip is, if you are doing a fresh brand new application, say I go into the drugstore, I'm starting out with like a medium brown hair color and I want to make my hair darker. Rather than going home and just slapping it all over your head and just going section by section and pulling it all the way through, apply it to your roots first. What I suggest doing is splitting your hair into four sections to make it a little bit easier. It's more helpful to like stay neat. That way you're not missing any spots. So section your hair down the middle and then off of that part, come down to your ear on either side so that you have two sections in the front and two sections in the back. So just squeeze the product out right at the root, rub it in a little bit and then just work on each section at a time, doing nice neat partings. Apply it all over to your root area first when you are depositing color. So if you're trying to change your color, you either want to like deepen what you already have or go darker. If you're trying to go lighter, you wanna do the opposite. We'll talk about that in a second. Your roots are new fresh hair. So the cuticle is a lot tighter because it's baby hair, it's fresh. It hasn't been exposed to hot tools and just like the environment, you know? Your hair on the ends is older hair. It's been through more shit. So the cuticle is gonna be a little more open. It's gonna suck up that color more quickly and you don't want your ends to look super, super saturated and be darker than your roots. So apply it to your roots first, give them a little extra time to really take that color and then after you've applied it all over to your roots, you can then pull it through to the mid strand and ends of your hair. And I suggest using a wide tooth comb or some kind of like wet brush or something to comb it through to make sure that you're fully saturating everything and that you're not missing any spots. My second tip is if you are doing a retouch, let's say you've been coloring your hair dark brown, we're just gonna stick to that. And now your roots have grown in and you're like, okay, it's time for me to refresh my hair color. I know a lot of people will then take that color and they will apply it all over their entire head, roots to ends. Do not do that. You do not want to be overlapping that box color a million times on your ends. That's how it's gonna end up looking flat and dull and it's gonna start being real obvious that you have box color in your hair and it's just gonna feel really dry, especially. So when it's time to do a retouch, again, just apply the color to your roots first and then if you do need to refresh your ends because sometimes the color can fade a little over time, wet the ends a little bit first, brush through, make sure it's all even, then apply the color to the mid strand and ends just for the last 10 to 15 minutes. The ends already have color on them. You just want to refresh it a little bit. You don't need to do a full application to them again. If you are looking to go darker, I suggest whatever color it is that you wanna be, go one shade lighter than that. Box color can be really, really intense. That's the thing. It's made to be like a one size fits all kind of situation and it's meant to cover the most stubborn, stubborn, full 100% gray hair, right? And if you don't have that much gray or any gray, you don't necessarily need it to be that strong and that powerful. So oftentimes, based on what I've heard people tell me and just based on my own experiences, because I'm guilty, I used to use box color back in the day all the time, it usually ends up coming out darker than what you originally wanted. And sure, over time it can kind of like fade and lighten up a little bit, but if you want the results that you're looking for right away after your first application, hi. Just pick one shade lighter. Okay, so now let's talk about going lighter with box color. Because everything that I talked about up until this point is like I said, if you wanna go darker, if you just wanna like richen up your current color, but now let's say you wanna go lighter. Let's use my hair as an example. Let's say I wanted to be blonde. I can't do that with box color. If I were to go and get a blonde box color and put it on my hair, best case scenario, my hair would turn orange, but I'm not gonna get blonde from a box color with my hair being as dark as it is. So with box color, if you're trying to go lighter, you can go maybe one or two shades lighter, but that's about it. Your hair's just gonna end up turning orange, it's gonna be brassy, it's not gonna be good. But let's say you're just looking to go one shade lighter than where you're at now and you're okay with it being warm. That's the other thing to keep in mind. Your hair is gonna be warm. If you're trying to go lighter with box dye, it's always gonna have a warm finish. But let's say you are just trying to go one shade lighter. When you're applying your color, you want to do the opposite of what I said to do if you're looking to go darker. So you wanna apply it to the root area last. And without getting too technical into all the details, basically if you're trying to go lighter and you apply it to your roots first, or even if you just apply it roots to ends right away, your roots are gonna end up coming out lighter than your ends and you're gonna have the look of hot roots where it's like brighter and more vibrant and lighter on your roots and then not as much on the rest of your hair and it's not gonna look right. So apply it, I would say, about an inch or two away from your roots first down to the mid-strand and ends and then after you do that and that has sat for about 15 minutes or so, then go through and apply it to your roots. Another thing to keep in mind, I said with box color, you can only go like one or two shades lighter than where you're starting from, right? That is only true if you have virgin hair, meaning you have not colored it. It is fresh, natural hair that has just grown right out of your scalp. If you throw a dark brown color on your hair and then you decide, oh, I wanna go a little bit lighter, it's not gonna happen with box color. It's just, it's not. Color, you may have heard this term before, color does not lift color, meaning you cannot throw color on top of previous artificial color and make it lighter. It's not going to remove that. You need to then use either color remover, bleach, you know, some kind of lightener to do that. Those are things that I would not recommend doing yourself at home, especially if you don't know what you're doing. If that is the case, go to a salon, go to a professional. My next tip is after you do any kind of box color, always follow it up with a good deep conditioner because like I said, box color can be very harsh and it can be very drying to your hair. So you wanna make sure that you're putting that moisture back into your hair after using the box color. And then my last piece of advice is just honestly, don't do it unless you are fully committed and it's like your only option. Cause here's the thing, if you're like, oh, I really just don't wanna go to a salon and pay to get my hair done, I'd rather just go to the drugstore and you know, pay $6 and do it myself. But you know that you're the type of person that you like to change your hair color all the time. Box color is very difficult. It can be very, very difficult to remove from your hair. So unless you are committed, like this is the color that I want to have for the next five plus years and I don't plan on changing it at all anytime soon, don't do it, go to a professional because if you have box color in your hair and then you decide that you wanna change it and it has to be removed from your hair or lightened, not only is it going to end up being extremely expensive because now it's a color correction, which is gonna cost you a lot more than just a regular color appointment because there's a lot more that goes into it, it's a lot more time consuming, a lot more difficult. But it's also going to end up creating more damage or at least it's gonna definitely increase the possibility of damage. It's really hard to remove these harsh colors from your hair without causing any type of damage at all. And you're probably not gonna get the results that you want. It's gonna take a long time and be a long process. Your hair can end up looking like this and this, this, this. It's not pretty, trying to remove box color is a pain in the ass. And then like I said, it's a long process, not just the one appointment, it can take multiple appointments over months and months. It can take up to a year or more to get that box color out of your hair and finally get you to your goal. And at that point, you've already spent well over $1,000 most likely. So it's like, was that $6 box really worth it? I know it's like easy and convenient to just do it yourself at home and so cheap in the moment, but if you know that you like to change your hair and you're probably gonna wanna be lighter, it's just, it's just not worth it. It's really not, honestly. So yeah, that is it for this video. Those are all of my tips. Like I said, I am not trying to encourage anybody to use box color on their hair. I know that there are people that are still gonna do it no matter what. I would rather be one of those stylists that's going to help people and be realistic rather than just being like, nope, nope, don't do it at home, don't do it. Because I'd be a hypocrite. I used to do my hair at home. That's how I discovered my love for this industry. I'm just trying to be realistic. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope that you found this video helpful. If you would like to see more videos like this one, make sure to subscribe to my channel here and also go and follow me over on my Instagram page styled by Sam Vey. I share tons of hair tips over there as well. And hopefully I'll see you in my next video. Bye.