Vibrant and pastel hair colors have become some of the hottest fashion trends, with whimsical styles like mermaid, unicorn and sunset.

Haley Nap, manager at Tulsa Hair Co.’s Brookside location, also has seen the “hidden rainbow” trend emerge recently where customers come in and ask stylists to transform the underneath of their hair into a rainbow.

“I love making an income doing something fun, exciting and something that changes every year,” Nap said.

For customers who don’t want to commit to a full head of purple hair, dying a strip of hair or tips of the hair is a good alternative, Nap said. Another fun option is cutting a design into a section of the scalp that is covered up with longer hair.

Tulsa Hair Co. customer Audie Hamon had mermaid-like scales cut into her hair and dyed various shades of blue.

But turning your hair into a bright cotton candy color is no walk through the carnival. Getting the vibrant color can be a five-hour process.

That’s the biggest misconception of turning your locks into a baby pink, said Terri Brimmer, director of operations at Tulsa Hair Co. Most customers think they can walk into the salon with natural hair and leave with a vibrant fashion color an hour and a half later.

“Fashion color” is the technical term for unnatural or bright hair colors.

“I’m not going to lie, there are some people who walk in, they find out the price, they find out the time and how long it’s going to last and they kind of give up,” Nap said.

When a customer calls to schedule an appointment to receive fashion color hair at a Tulsa Hair Co. salon, they are informed the process can take up to five hours and can cost more than $200.

“Every price is dependent on hair texture, density and porosity so it’s a stylist discretion because it is labor cost,” Nap said.

For example, when one customer wanted to transform her auburn hair to light pink, Nap charged her $75 to lighten her hair, $75 for the hair color and $65 for the keratin protein treatments. Nap had to perform keratin treatments on the customer’s hair in between lightning treatments to help maintain the health and integrity of the hair.

Despite the time-consuming process, transforming customers’ tresses into sea green, lavender or robin egg shell blue is still one of Nap’s favorite parts of her job.

She sports a dark purple ombre bob herself.

Nap started working her way up the ranks at Tulsa Hair Co. five years ago at the age of 17 after graduating from Tulsa Tech with a cosmetology degree.

The beginning of the pastel fashion hair color trend took hold about two years ago, Nap said.

“I started doing them on my own hair and then you started to see the silvers and a lot of rose gold,” she said.

The first step in applying fashion colors to a customer’s hair is to lighten the hair from the natural color to a platinum. If the hair has been colored previously, it can take several lightning treatments to reach the platinum base.

“Different colors require different levels of lift,” Nap said.

For cooler tones — blues, greens and purples — all yellow tints have to be removed. For warmer tones — red, oranges and yellows — the yellow tones can stay because they won’t interfere with the overall color.

If the hair needs to be lightened several times, stylists will put the hair through a keratin protein treatment.

“We never want to compromise the integrity of the hair to get our results. If you don’t have healthy hair, what’s the point of having the right color?” Nap said.

Tulsa Hair Co. salons use Paul Mitchell products and Mitchell’s Pop XG fashion color dyes. There are 12 different colors and one diluter. The line doesn’t come with pastel dyes but gives salons a chart to use the colors and make the colors a desired pigment.

“With the pastels, we use a lot of diluter and just a few drops of the actual color to make the color that you see on the hair,” Nap said.

Once the proper color is mixed, Nap and other stylists can paint the color straight on the hair because the Pop XG line is a semipermanent direct dye. The hair will turn out exactly how the color is painted on, assuming the hair is lightened correctly.

Primarily young adults and kids gravitate toward the fashion color trend, Nap said. They usually have the time and face less restrictions on maintaining a natural hair color year around.

If a young adult comes in needing to turn his or her colored hair back to a natural color, the process is fairly simple. The stylists just tone the hair back to a natural color. No lightening process is involved.

Kids who color their hair usually don’t need to come back in for a toning treatment because the wear and tear in the sun and pool typically washes the color out.Read more at:www.queenieau.com | cheap formal dresses online