Everything You Need To Know About Hair Toner And Which Ones Are Best
Heading to the salon is the best way to colour your hair for sure – but what about the times in between the salon? What should you be doing at home to ensure you maintain a healthy-looking colour?
Coloured hair, especially blonde, if not cared for properly, can go brassy over time, leaving you with unnatural looking, undesired undertones. While there are many different ways to treat your hair colour such as shampoos for colour-treated hair, colour hair treatments and heat protectants, the very best thing you can do is use a toner or toning shampoo in-between your salon visits.
Hair toner will solve all your unwanted undertones and keep your hair colour looking its very best! Here is everything you need to know about hair toner.
What is hair toner?
Hair toner is a product that people with highlighted or coloured hair use to correct or personalise their colour. It keeps out brassy, orange or yellow tones that are caused by sun exposure or harsh products. Using a hair toner over time can prolong the need for salon colouring, enhancing your hair colour, but also keeping your colour looking as professional and natural as possible. While toner is most commonly used on blondes, it is also often used for brunettes and redheads who want to get rid of brassy tones too.
But what’s the difference between an in-salon toner and an at-home toner? A professional salon toner is usually more pigmented and stronger than an at-home toner, allowing your hairstylist to create a deeper desired colour. However, in between salon visits, a silver shampoo or purple shampoo is perfect to use at home as a top-up and will create the desired effect after just a few washes.
To correctly remove unwanted colour, and remove shades of yellow or brassiness, one must follow the laws of colour and find the correct product for their desired look. It’s all about using the opposite shade on the colour wheel. For example, purple cancels out yellow, and that’s why purple shampoo is so effective for enhancing blonde colour.
What do we love most about hair toner? There’s simply no one shade suits all and toner is a way to make your hair colour your own. With so many different types of hair toning shampoos and colour conditioners on the market, you can choose between a wide range of colours such as silver, pink, champagne, buttermilk, crema, lark, sutro, juno and several other shades.
Some of the best at-home hair toners
Here are a few of our favourite at-home hair toning products and colour care products. They are all gentle on the scalp and spread out varying amounts of enhancing pigment through the hair to revive its colour!
Cheryl’s top tip: if you want more intense toning, leave any of these products in hair for up to five minutes.
No.4P Olaplex Blonde Enhancer Toning Shampoo
Olaplex’s 4P Blond Maintenance Purple Shampoo is an update on the No 4 Bond Maintenance Shampoo with hardworking purple toner that will leave blondes three times brighter than regular purple shampoos. Infused with patented Olaplex’s Bond Building Technology, this customisable toning shampoo strengthens, softens, and neutralises unwanted yellow tones for brighter, more manageable hair.
Bed Head TIGI Dumb Blonde Purple Toning Shampoo
Use this product to banish brassy and yellow tones and enhance vibrant, bright, brilliant blonde. This specially-formulated shampoo is powered by violet toners to banish brassiness and brighten blonde hair. The purple toning pigments will help to increase cool tones and banish yellow and brassy tones in blonde hair, as well as improve blonde vibrancy and add shine. Use it once a week for optimal results.
This shampoo is not your regular purple shampoo, it’s infused with a pink rose hue! The Innova Blond Addict Shampoo causes minimum hair breakage and gives a perfect lasting glow. Kiss goodbye to brassy tones, while it regenerates the hair fibre, reduces hair breakage and neutralizes yellow tones for a perfectly divine blond look.
Joico Blonde Life Brightening Shampoo and Conditioner
Enhance the radiance of your blonde hair with Joico’s Blonde Life Brightening Shampoo and Conditioner to nourish and illuminate your hair. It’s a neutralising and moisturising shampoo and conditioner created specifically for bleached, double-processed or high-lifted blonde hair.
Kevin Murphy Blonde Angel Treatment
Set the right tone, and work to restore optimum condition and lustre to brassy blonde tones. Kevin Murphy’s Blonde Angel conditions and moisturises bleached, highlighted and grey hair, putting the bounce back into your blonde while repairing any brassy or yellow tones.
Redken Colour Extend Brownlights Shampoo and Conditioner
A colour-depositing, sulfate-free shampoo for natural or colour-treated brown hair. Blue shampoos are ideal for colour correcting and neutralising brassy tones on brown and highlighted hair, and they are ideal for brunettes who need to cover grey hair. This blue toning, sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner gently moisturizes the hair and helps prolong cool brunette colour.
Schwarzkopf Professional Goodbye Yellow is a highly-pigmented wash that offers an instant tonal deposit to counteract and neutralise underlying yellow tones. It cleanses hair gently while strengthening thanks to the integrated Bonding Technology.
Schwarzkopf Blondme Cool Blondes Neutralizing Mask
Use this mask to repair the internal structure of fragile, lightened and coloured hair without overburdening. This neutralising mask delivers cool pigments to maintain, refresh and enrich blonde tone directions, helps to neutralise any blonde that has a tendency to turn warm and visibly brightens highlighted or lightened blondes.
It’s a wash-out toning, and caring conditioner to colour and condition, all in one step! The semi-permanent dyes provide vibrant colour results of up to 10 washes – the lastingness always depends on hair condition, colour base, the quantity of used product and processing time.
That’s all folks! If you try any of these toning products, we would love to know what you think about them – tell us on Instagram or Facebook or pop us a message in the chat!