“Cooler” and “lighter” are two different jobs, and an orange level 6 usually wants both. Two levels of lighter is another appointment, a 6 taken to an 8 on permanent. Cooler is toner work: blue cancels the orange under a dark blonde, and a demi 6.1 on 10 vol does it without moving the level, which is the demi that cools a 6 and leaves it there. This page is the one bowl that does a little of both, a permanent 7.1 on 20 vol, which cancels the orange and nudges healthy hair half a level to a level toward the medium blonde level. If the word in the room is “light” with nothing after it, the answer is bleach, and the chart of levels 1 to 10 shows why.
Blue for the orange, six percent for the nudge
Under a 6 the pigment is orange, and the opposite of orange on the wheel is blue. A 7.1, 7A in the letter lines, carries that blue at the level the hair is heading for, and the strongest developer the scalp should see lifts while it deposits: half a level on healthy hair, a full level on fine virgin hair, nothing on hair that is porous from old color. One old permanent through the lengths sometimes lifts a level and sometimes sits still, and no dry swatch tells you which, so a test round on a nape piece for the full 30 minutes is worth its half hour. As the hair moves, the orange turns yellow-orange, the level 7 pigment, and blue alone leaves the yellow half sitting there; a quarter of the bowl as 7.12 (7VB, ash-violet) handles it on a 6 that was lifted there.
Ash reads darker than the number, because blue and violet do not reflect light the way gold does, so a cool 7 looks a shade deeper in the mirror than a warm 7 at the same depth.
Mids first, roots last, one timer
Dry, unwashed hair, and never on the day of a bleach. Equal parts 7.1 and 20 vol, 40 g of each for shoulder-length hair, a little under an ounce and a half a side, weighed, and enough to saturate every section. Mix what goes on in the next 15 minutes. Mid-lengths first, half an inch off the scalp, then the roots last, since the scalp is warm and processes them fastest. Ends that have seen color before grab, so they get a small bowl of the same mix diluted with clear, in the last ten minutes only.
Timer at 30 once the roots are on. At 15, wipe a mid-length piece: the orange should have dropped to a dull gold, and if it is still red-orange the hair was a 5 and you will rinse a cool 6. At 25 the mids read cool and a little lighter, and the roots have caught up. Thirty-five is the ceiling, and if the leaflet says less, the leaflet wins. Past it the ash keeps depositing on hair that has stopped lifting. Read the wiped piece rather than the chart, and read it dry, because wet hair reads a level darker.
What one bowl gives, head by head
| What the hair is now | What 7.1 on 20 vol gives | When bleach is the tool |
|---|---|---|
| Natural 6, never colored | A cool 6.5 to 7 | Anything she calls light |
| Natural 6 roots, colored lengths | Roots move to 7, lengths cool and stay a 6 | Bleach the lengths first |
| A 4 lifted to 6 with permanent color | Cools it, a quarter level at most | For any blonde; color does not lift color |
| Colored more than twice, porous ends | Cools only; ends can drift gray | Demi 6.1 and a rest |
| A 6 with 40 percent gray | A cool 7 with sheer, greenish white strands | A third 7N in the bowl |
When it comes back warm
The blue fades first. Three to four weeks in, the ash has softened; by six to eight the hair reads warm again, and the half level of lift underneath stays, so the fade lands on a warm 7 and the refresh is the 7 to 7 demi refresh on 10 vol. That demi step goes on the other way round from this bowl: roots first, ends last, at the bowl, because a 10 vol demi does not lift and the root is the least porous hair on the head. Purple shampoo between visits is upkeep.
