Hair Colour Toners

What a hair toner does, and what ours does

Toner is one word covering two different products, and buying the wrong one is a common and expensive mistake. One kind cancels unwanted warmth. The other lays a colour on top. They are not interchangeable, and the difference matters most in the week after you have bleached.

Cancelling brass is a different job

After bleaching, hair usually lands somewhere between yellow and orange, because the warm pigment is the last thing to lift out. What fixes that is a violet or blue-based toner, applied after the bleach has been rinsed out, which neutralises the warm tone rather than adding a colour of its own. We do not make one. If that is what brought you here, buy it from a brand that specialises in it. We would rather say so than sell you the wrong bottle and have you wash it out on Sunday.

Silver and white are colours, not corrections

The two toners in the Stargazer range work the other way round. They are semi-permanent colours that put silver or white onto hair which has already been lifted very pale, in exactly the way any other shade of ours would. On yellow hair they go over the yellow rather than removing it, and the yellow shows through. They need a genuinely pale base to read as silver at all. Neither is available to buy at present. They are also the only two shades in the range that cannot be mixed with the others.

Getting the base right comes first

Whatever you tone with afterwards, the lift has to happen first and it has to be done properly. Our Vegan Hair Bleach Kit uses a 30 Vol developer and lifts up to seven levels in a single application, with bleach powder, bowl, stick, brush, gloves and instructions in the box. One kit covers shoulder-length hair, so buy two if yours is longer or thicker. Check the hair as you go rather than working to the clock. The rest of the lightening products sit on the hair bleach page.

Toner and grey hair

A lot of people searching for toner are trying to make grey hair look deliberate rather than accidental. Our semi-permanent colours will not do that. They will not cover white or grey hair, and putting a silver tone over grey achieves nothing you can see. The one product of ours that touches grey is the Root Touch Up Hair Mascara, and it covers roots temporarily, until the next wash. That is the whole of it, and we would rather you knew now.

Most people who land here are better served elsewhere on the site. Colour that lasts, with no ammonia, peroxide or PPDs, is on the semi-permanent hair dye page. If you want one night of colour and nothing left afterwards, the temporary wash-out hair colour page has the gels and mascaras. The hair dye for dark hair page is worth reading if you have not bleached yet, and everything we make for hair is gathered on the vegan hair dye page.