Professional Hair Color Rant: Mariah Carey’s Colorist Gave Poor Advice

Please allow me a professional hair color rant over a recent interview buzzing around the Internet with Mariah Carey’s colorist and “OK! Magazine”. My two biggest peeves relating to my work are writers who give hair and makeup advice yet have no professional experience in the industry, and people coloring their hair at home. It seems that Kyle White, Mariah Carey’s “go-to” guy, gave some poor advice to readers in the hair color department, and while I hate to say anything negative against a fellow professional, I feel compelled to let readers know why coloring the hair at home is never a good idea.

During the interview in “Ok! Magazine”, Kyle White offered up some insight into the celebrity world of hairstyling and his thoughts on the color trends for 2013, most of which I concurred with. However, his answer to the following questions made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

OK!: What are the DOs and DON’Ts to coloring your hair at home?

KW: When using permanent color, don’t go more than two or three shades in either direction. If you have a few grey hairs and you want to match your color that can be done at home. If you are naturally light and you want to paint a few face-framing highlights with a home highlighting kit, that can also be done at home. However, if you are a dark brunette who wants to go blonde or want a whole head of highlights, you need to see a professional. Drastic color changes or complex highlighting techniques should be done in a salon.

Sorry Kyle, but my professional hair color rant has your answer to “OK! Magazine” as an emphatic: “No, don’t ever color the hair at home, no matter what the circumstance!” And here is why Mariah Carey’s hair colorist gave poor advice.

Firstly, laypersons are not trained in hair color, which is why we, as professionals continually educate ourselves in the latest innovations of the industry. Nonprofessionals are not familiar with permanent, semi or demi color and can rarely judge two to three shades in either direction from what is pictured on a box. Please, I am not saying the clients are not intelligent either. What I am saying is there is more involved in the process, such as using color swatches, and Kyle should know better.

What exactly are a few gray hairs to cover? What may be a few to you and I might just be different to the person who has the gray hair, again poor judgment.

At-home hair colorists generally slather the hair color on the entire head, rather than just the regrowth. Repeatedly doing this damages the hair and causes color build up, even if the box seems safe and it is the same color as the natural color, which inevitably leads the client to the salon for corrective color that can be costly.

Secondly, at-home highlighting kits make me gasp at the thought! I have seen too many young girls over process their hair using at-home highlighting kits because they reuse and reuse until the color is lighter than what the kit was made for and then come to me to correct the cotton candy they created. (Well, at least they say they used the highlighting kits)

Lastly, Kyle White, Mariah Carey’s hair colorist, works out of a high-end salon in New York City. The problem with his recommendation is those who will do at-home hair color do so to save money. His clientele can afford to change their hair color at will and that of their daughters’, however, there are those of us who cater to the lower to middle end of the pay scale and they are the ones who come in to correct the color done at home or avoid it to save money. If a young teen reads what Mariah Carey’s colorist told her to do, she runs the risk of damaging her hair, not to mention that statement pulls those clients from our salons, because they are looking to save money.

The best hair color advice is to never use a box at home, no matter how safe you think it is. If finances are an issue, with this awful economy, salons would rather keep you coming in and work with you on pricing rather than risk losing a client altogether to a box from the pharmacy.

The problem with what Mariah Carey’s hair colorist wrote is that people may misread it to mean something else. He was trying to be helpful, but the bottom line is the best hair color results come from a salon, not a box, even for the most basic of changes.