ash balayage

she came in with colour from another salon. it was not bad work — it had been done carefully, the lightening was even — but it had been formulated for the salon mirror, under warm light, and it had not survived contact with a london winter.

outside, in february, the ends looked brassy. the warmth that had felt rich in the chair read orange under grey sky. she had been wearing her hair up for two months to avoid looking at it.

the difficulty with correcting existing colour is that the hair has already been through a lightening process. lifting further to remove the brassiness risks over-processing ends that are already carrying previous colour. toning without lifting first means working with what the hair already has, not what you wish it had.

we chose to tone.

the formula was built around the london light problem: what reads as ash in a bright, warm salon needs to lean slightly cool in the formula to survive outdoors. we used a violet-based toner at the ends, a cooler ash through the mid-lengths, and left the root shadow untouched. the result is a gradient that reads warm and natural indoors and clean and lifted outside.

she lives in islington. she walks to work through the city most mornings. she told us it looks best at eight in the morning, heading north on upper street, when the light is low and coming from the left.

that was exactly what we were aiming for.