How to: Colour hair extensions silver

So as you saw in my last post I went from brunnette to a very cool ash ombre! Yay! And as all of you know I'm a huge hair extensions fan, the longer and thicker the better! I wanted to get myself some silver/grey hair extensions from cliphair, unfortunately they don't do those in 24 inches (YET). But as I'm a loyal customer, I got myself some in the lightest blonde shade, so I can play around with the colours - more work for me but I get to practice my skills.

       Products I used:

• ClipHair Extensions in Lightest Blonde for brightest result
• La Riche Directions dye in silver for white/silver result
• Tint bowl and brush
• Plastic sheet
• Tangle teezer
• Some patience
  

If you are colouring your hair extensions at home, I strongly suggest you first wash your wefts a couple of times before applying any kind of chemicals. Very often hair extensions contain a silicone coating  to keep the hair soft and shiny, and it creates a barrier for colouring which can either intesify the colour or for  the result to be too weak. Once you do that, before colouring the whole thing do a strand test because we want to eliminate any chances of the hair extensions not taking colour or turning GREEN or BLUE as a result. Just like any of us, I don't want to spend a £100 on hair extensions just to ruin them!

To do this, mix some of the dye into a bowl and apply it on one of the smallest clip-in wefts. Follow manufacturer instructions for developement time. Once the dye has developed, you can then see if the hair is the right shade and decide whether you want to continue using the dye or not.

I did two different strand test with two different colour options and two strikingly different results.
For the first one I used La Riche directions in silver for 30 mins, which completely toned down the yellow hues of the extensions and left a silghtly purple tone behind - close enough to what I need.

The second one i used Wella Colour Touch 8/81 with 3% developer for 10 minutes, exactly the same colour that I use to freshen up my own grey ombre. The result was quite shocking - the strand test turned BLUE - that's why, it is really important to do strand tests before colouring extensions, even if you are using the same colour that you use on yourself!

 

 I also had to ombre my hair extensions to make them blend with my own hair. You can read about how I do it in one of my older posts.