Hair dye can be used safely by all when used as directed...but when you use permanent color on your hair, it’s important to take special care for your color-treated hair. Hair breakage can occur with color treated hair, especially if you already have damaged hair. Here are tips to avoid breakage:
- Color your hair within 3 levels of your natural color
- Do not leave hair color on for longer than recommended in the instruction booklet
- Just touch up your roots each time you color, and do not repeatedly color the mid-lengths and ends of the hair
- Wait 14 days between hair coloring and applying perms or chemical hair straighteners
- Apply a conditioner following a shampoo to decrease hair tangles.
- Comb and brush your hair as little as possible, especially with wet hair. Wet hair is much easier to break than dry hair
- Try to air-dry your hair when possible, but when needing to dry your hair quickly, use a water-whisking hair towel. Blow-drying and other heat tools can be damaging to hair.
You can also read through our blog posts from Dr. Zoe Diana Draelos, MD, a research and clinical board-certified dermatologist with over 30 years of dermatologic research experience. Her articles include:
All About Ammonia-Free Hair Color