The purple shampoo has always been a mystery. A lot of blonds swear by it. Other blondes hate it. Brunettes often ask can they use it too. There are many questions about this bottle of mystery, and we are about to answer them all! Read on more to learn how purple shampoo works and how it affects different hair colors.
Why Is Purple Shampoo Good for Your Hair?
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Purple shampoo cleanses strands and dispenses purple pigment across your hair to helps return your hair color to a cooler tone. Regular and correct usage of purple shampoo will help keep brass under control and ensure your hair colors stay fresh and vibrant longer. In order to understand why purple shampoo is good for your hair, you need to know what brassiness is. Brassiness describes the unwanted orange and yellowish tones that appear in lightened strands, especially in blonde hair.
If you are a natural blonde or have your hair lightened, such as with balayage or ombré, a whole host of things, starting from UV rays from sun and chlorine, to heat styling and weather can mess up your hair color. That’s when purple shampoo comes to your rescue!
It’s just one extra step in your hair care routine that will make a big difference over time.
How Does Purple Shampoo Work?
To understand the idea behind purple shampoo, you need to be familiar with color theory. As you know, hair experts recommend purple shampoo to blondes who want to tame brassy hair and minimize orange and yellowish tones. So, if you look at a color wheel, purple is on the opposite side of orange, which means these two colors neutralize each other. Considering the theory, purple shampoo should neutralize or reduce brassy hair tones.
Purple shampoo is typically diluted with water, and it’s used the same way as your regular shampoo. In order to have any visible impact, the intensity of the purple in the shampoo formula has to be very dark, and it mostly resembles the color of dark blue ink.
It’s hard to say whether purple shampoo really works or not, and it all depends on the type of your hair and how you use it. Every time you wash your hair with it, you are basically staining it with purple dye. Rinsing it out too much will reduce the brightening benefit to your blonde hair. On the other hand, if you leave it for too long, your hair may turn grayish. To get the best results, you should always use it as recommended by your hair specialist.
Does it Damage Hair?
Purple shampoo doesn’t damage your hair. The only bad thing that can happen is that if you have high porosity blonde hair, the dark purple dye may be absorbed easily, leaving you with stains. The product is not damaging, but it can ruin your color. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often, especially if you use the shampoo as intended.
How Often Should You Use it?
This depends on how often you wash your hair. If you wash your hair twice a week, you can use it once a week. However, if you wash your hair often, like every other day, limit your use to twice a week. If you are afraid of using purple shampoo too often, you can mix it with your regular shampoo and use it every time you wash your hair.
If you are wondering how long to leave purple shampoo on your hair, general recommendations are that the cooler your blonde tone, the longer you should let the toner sit in before washing it out. Warm blondes should leave in the product 1-3 minutes before rinsing, neutral blondes 3-5 minutes, and cool blondes 5-10 minutes before rinsing.
Purple Shampoo and Other Hair Colors
Now when you know how purple shampoo affects blonde and brown hair, you may be wondering how it affects other common hair colors such as red, or even gray hair. To have the questions answered, we have to look again at the color wheel.
To Blonde Hair?
As mentioned above, blondes use purple shampoo to help them beat brass and keep undertones at bay. If your hair is color-treated, over time, the color will rinse out. With purple shampoo, your color can last longer and look more vibrant and fresh.
Other things that can affect your hair color are the sun, hard weather, heat styling, swimming in a chlorine pool, or mineral deposits from standard tap shower water. For this reason, purple shampoo can also be handy to natural blondes.
To Brown Hair?
For brown hair, purple shampoo can be used to help brunettes to bounce back from brassiness. While purple shampoo is typically used for blonde hair, brunettes with balayage or ombré can use it to deal with color changes of the highlighted areas.
So, if you are a brunette with balayage or ombré, purple shampoo will make the lightened sections of your hair look more vibrant, and ensure the color doesn’t fade quickly or develop yellowish tones.
To Red Hair?
Color-treated redheads who use a purple shampoo may give their hair a very deep pink color. This depends on the shade of red hair and the strength and quality of the purple dye in the shampoo.
To Gray Hair?
If you have gray hair, purple shampoo will have similar effects as it has on blonde hair. The violet pigments in the shampoo will neutralize any brassy pigments in gray hair, and it will leave it looking vibrant and refreshed.
To Platinum Hair?
Whether you have decided to go platinum, cool ashy blonde, or silver, regular use of purple shampoo will take care of all those unwanted undertones, and keep your platinum blonde hair look fresh-from-the-salon bright. It’s simple as that.
We hope you enjoyed this review, and invite you to check out many of our other updated and recent reviews including our Hair coloring, Unicorn post, our review of the Top Hair dryers for 2020, and our Black and Blue hair coloring post. We are working on new articles daily, and look forward to providing you with some amazing content in the near future.