If you have ever experimented with your hair colour at home, you know how easy it is to get it slightly wrong!
Whether you ended up with a full-blown bleaching disaster or simply decided the new shade didn't suit you, we're sure you'll agree that nothing is more frustrating than having to splash out hundreds of pounds for a professional colour correction when you dyed your hair at home to save the cash in the first place!
'It's great when women are brave enought to experiment with their hair colour- but they have to be realistic'
Lucky for us DIY ladies, then, that style consultant to the A-List, Scott Cornwall, has come up with a product that mustn't be missing from your bathroom!
Colour B4 Hair Colour Remover will help you to return to your natural hair colour if you have hit the (dye) bottle with disastrous - or unexpected- results!
The easy to use revolutionary hair care product has been flying off the shelves in drug stores and enables women all across the UK to experiment with their natural hair colour without fearing for the worst - or the expense of a salon visit!
So whether you are a colour-chameleon like Britney Spears or have gone for a wacky new shade like Kelly O's newly lavender locks, help is at hand thanks to Scott's genius!
We sat down with the man himself to get the low-down on dying your hair at home - and on celebrity hair disasters...
Can you give us a few tips to avoid a DIY hair dye disaster?
It's great when women are brave enought to experiment with their hair colour - but they have to be realistic.
You should know your personal colouring - do warm colours suit you or are you a 'cold' type? And you have to be realistic about how light or dark you can go. If you don't want it to go completely wrong, you should never stray more than shades away from your natural hair colour.
And never impulse-buy a hair dye - that’s the biggest reason people make colour mistakes. They see someone on X Factor with it and say, “I want that”, then run out and buy it. You need to calm down and wait a week at least - if you still like the idea of it then, go for it!
Do you have any expert tricks on how best to apply colour yourself?
Hair colour is best applied when the hair is very slightly damp, the reason being that it smoothes on nicely. If the hair is really dry it can go patchy.
You should apply colour to hair that has been washed a couple of times with removal or baby shampoo, to wash out all the gunk and conditioner that is sitting in your hair, which stops the colour from getting through properly.
Always colour hair in daylight, never colour hair at night. You cannot see it properly in artificial light and people wake up in the morning and their hair looks different to how they thought it would because they haven’t seen it developing properly and they’ve either underdeveloped or overdeveloped it.
Where should you start to apply the colour?
Depending on how long the hair is, you start on the mid-length strands and ends. Most people start on their roots first but the colour develops very quickly there because of the heat from their scalp. You should start at the mid-length areas first and then do the root afterwards. Unless you’re doing re-growth, in which case you do the roots first.
Never pour the bottle over your head if you are re-colouring! People tip the whole bottle over their head and their hair gets darker and darker and darker. Only do the roots – only apply to the parts that don’t have colour!
What’s the worst mistake you can do at home?
I would never advise people to do an all-head bleach at home, because it could burn their scalp. I always tell them to put a highlighting cap on top.
The second-worse crime is that they stick the colour all over their head or keep recolouring it again and again. They don’t realise that all these products, as much as they have conditioner in, still open the hair structure to change it, so it needs a bit of rest. You get the best colour on hair that’s in good condition - otherwise it looks flat and dry!
Britney Spears goes from blonde to brunette and back again all the time - that can't be good, surely?
'I would never advise people to do an all-head bleach at home, because it could burn their scalp'
No, it’s not good at all. Because Britney has to bleach her hair to get it that blonde - and then she has all these hair extensions! Brown hair on her looks muddy because she’s a ‘spring’colour type - she suits very bright colours and bright hair, so when she’s brunette it makes her skin tone look sallow and dirty. It doesn’t work for her at all!
Who else is getting it wrong in celeb-land?**
**
Jordan is another offender. I suspect she dyes her hair black because she can’t get all the built-up colour out. I dread to think what’s in her hair – seriously! Half of her hair is fake anyway. She’s contrasting every single thing that would look good on her
Jordan is what I call an ‘autumn’ type – so she would suit auburn hair. What would look really good on her is a soft auburn tone with a few golden-blonde sections.
She probably went dark because she wanted to be more compatible with Peter Andre - so when they were together she was trying to be like Priscilla Presley and Elvis, I imagine. Now she’s stuck with that dark hair, because it’s really hard to get that colour out. She should take it off and wear a wig for six months!
And who's got their colour spot-on?
Girls Aloud have improved their hair colours so much! Kimberley Walsh' s hair colour now is perfect for her. When they first started they were making their hair so dark! I like Nicola Roberts’ hair now too; it looks far better now that she's embracing her natural red tones - she even could add a bit more red!
'I like Nicola Roberts' hair now too; it looks far better now she's embracing her natural red tones'
Sarah Harding’s style does suit her too - she has quite defined, dramatic features and very blue eyes so the bright blonde looks good on her. She’d look really boring if she went for a Jennifer Aniston style colour.
And then there's Cheryl's hair, which everybody wants!
Cheryl's colour’s good and surprisingly easy to achieve. It’s called a 6.0 or a 6.3 - just dark, gold and blonde sections. She has her hair highlighted and then they pour the 6.3 over the top. She’s naturally quite dark and they just lighten it up and mute it down a bit, so it gives it this really nice chocolaty colour. You can get it in any Boots store and it's really easy to recreate!
What are the big colour trends for 2010?
Red is going to make a massive comeback in 2010, but it is a tricky one - if you’re very blonde you have to pre-pigment and if you’re very dark it will go orange. Reds and auburns will only suit people who are a ‘warm’ colour-type, so if you are cool-coloured you should go down the Sharon Osbourne route and opt for a very 'dense' red.