 Hey guys Brian here with freesaloneducation.com and I want to do a little bit of color theory with you guys tonight. I want to do a little bit of understanding of realistic lifting so that when you are approaching a color client you're a little bit more comfortable with understanding where you're going, understanding how to get there and then what to expect when you get there. So first things first, you're going to have to understand your levels of lift chart. We've all been seeing it since beauty school, it shouldn't be something that's totally new to you but maybe it's something that you haven't visited in a while. So maybe go back and find your color brands level chart just to give you a little bit better understanding of what they have to offer with it. Obviously we've got it starting at the level four with your red violet going all the way up to the pale yellow at level ten. The first thing that I wanted to go over is what to do when you do a little bit of lifting and you want to actually enhance those warm tones. I feel like this day and age everybody is trying to shy away from warm tones. I particularly really like them so I'm going to go over it with you guys. And this is really, I think we need to understand any form of lifting. A lot of people think that this only applies if you're dealing with lighteners, highlights that kind of stuff but anytime you're going above what a person's natural is you are going to be doing lifting. Even if they have a certain percentage of gray whatever their natural level that's left in there is going to be lifted so you're going to have to take this into account. So right off the bat understand I think one of the big ones that I see quite commonly is going up to say a level eight. I see that a lot. A lot of people like to have a level eight base so that's what we're going to use for our little bit of explanation here. If we're bringing somebody up to a level eight the natural dominant pigment that you're going to bring out is going to be a nice yellow orange. Now that can be a really, really pretty color. Level eight warm color is going to be a really nice golden sort of color and you may want to enhance that. You may have someone that's going to look perfect with that, that golden tone to their color. So of course you're going to have to hit that with a yellow orange combination because that's the dominant pigment you need to be honest about that's where you're at. So you're going to need to add some yellow and or orange, not just one or the other because that's what a level eight is. And then after enhancing we also have the option of neutralizing whatever a dominant pigment is. I think that this tends to be something that most people try to do and unfortunately there's a few steps that I think people are skipping that keeps them from getting a hundred percent success every single time. I think the first step once you're lifting any type of lift, whether it is with a lightener or whether it's just lifting with color, you need to be really honest once you get to where you've finished lifting to. You need to be honest with what you're actually seeing. If you open up foils you need to be able to differentiate whether they have yellow orange dominant pigment showing or whether it's yellow or a pale yellow because if you don't truly identify what these are you're not going to be able to use the correct target to neutralize that out. Once you've really identified and been honest with yourself and said okay you're shooting for that white white highlight but really you just kind of ended up with a yellow. We've honestly accepted that so now we're going to come across to our neutralizer which is going to be a good solid violet. So once you go in with that good solid violet using that up against your yellow is what's going to give you that neutral base. Now my rule of thumb when it comes to how much warmth to leave because you don't necessarily always want to eradicate all of the warmth because then you're just going to be left with a very unnatural flat color which at your darker levels can start to look a little muddy because when you look at your neutralizers over here when you're adding blue and green to colors you're now venturing into territory of unnatural hair colors. So I tend to think however much neutralizer I put into it into my formulation is how much dominant pigment I'm going to get rid of. Like I said I like to leave a little bit of warmth so a lot of times I might just have half of my formula be a neutralizer instead of all of it. I'll add in a neutralizer with whatever kind of neutral base I wanted to use so that I'm still left with a little bit of warmth in my final end result to keep it a nice natural bright looking color. Of course you could always go that extreme level. I see that a lot these days up in this pale yellow range going in there with some serious hard violets and that's what's going to give you that overly cool sort of violety finished tone to it. It's a matter of taste but so long as you understand what you're doing when you go into it then you'll be fine. A really great tip for you when you're dealing with any of this neutralizing of the bases is you want to understand what color line you're working with. You want to understand what the pigments are. Just like we understand when you're talking with a guest you start using words to describe colors not everyone uses the same words. Ash to one color company is going to be a completely different thing to another one. So understand where do the blues live? Where do the greens live? Where's the yellows? The golds? Oranges? Before you try to enhance or neutralize any color so that you know you're actually going in knowing your stuff. So as a quick recap, when you guys are doing any kind of lifting I want you to first understand your levels of lift and then I want you to decide whether you're going to enhance or neutralize that dominant pigment. Then I want you to be honest with yourself about what dominant pigment you're actually working with so that when you look at your chart that's behind me you know exactly what you need to use to enhance or neutralize that tone. So good luck, happy coloring, be sure to send this your results. Thanks.