All About Color Correction: How To Use Toning Shampoo To Fix Brassy Hair

If you regularly highlight your hair at the salon or receive a blonding service such as balayage or ombre, you may notice that your strands can develop unwanted yellow, orange or red tones in between appointments with your hair stylist.

When it comes to color-correcting these tones, scheduling a 20 minute hair gloss service with your stylist is a great way to cancel out unwanted warmth and maintain your ideal tone. Nowadays, you may be wondering how you can help to color correct brassy hair at home. The solution? Integrating a powerful, color-correcting toning shampoo and conditioner into your haircare regimen. Toning shampoos can help correct color and keep your highlights bright in between salon appointments.

Read on to learn more about brassy hair and color correction, and discover the Redken toning shampoo system that is right for you. 

Yellow or orange tones, or “brassy hair”, often occurs in hair that has been lightened or highlighted. When the hair is lightened, it can expose underlying red, orange or yellow pigments in the hair. At the salon, your colorist will then apply hair color and toner to help you achieve your ideal hair color. In between salon appointments, brassy hair and unwanted tones can begin to appear in the hair as hair color fades. This is where toning shampoos and conditioners come in to help you correct these colors and banish brass.

“Redken’s toning shampoos correct brassy and unwanted tones with ultra-pigmented formulas,” says Redken Artist Sami Skinner, “When we want to cancel out brassiness in the hair, we want to utilize the pigment that’s located opposite on the color wheel which is also considered its’ complimentary color. When mixed together, these tones will neutralize, which is essentially what is done when your colorist tones your hair in the salon.”

Regularly integrating a toning shampoo and conditioner into your haircare regimen 1-2 times per week can help you to color correct and control brassy hair in between salon appointments. You can rotate your toning shampoo and conditioner with your usual color-protecting shampoo and conditioner- such as Redken Color Extend Magnetics- to help ensure the best results.

Toning shampoos and conditioners are haircare products that contain purple and other pigmented formulas to help cancel out the brassy tones that can appear in hair in between salon appointments. If you think of the color wheel, blue and purple are located directly opposite yellow and orange, which is why blue and purple-pigmented shampoo helps to correct color and remove brassy tones from the hair.  

The best toning shampoo and conditioner for you depends on your hair type and color. See the guide below to discover the best Redken toning haircare system for you:

Redken Color Extend Blondage toning purple shampoo and conditioner features a pigmented purple formula to help to cancel yellow and orange tones on blonde and highlighted hair.

“Redken Blondage is life changing for blonde and highlighted hair,” says Skinner, “It’s perfect for guests who do not like to see any warmth in their hair. It also helps to keep blonde and highlighted hair soft and silky.” 

Redken Color Extend Brownlights blue toning shampoo features a blue formula to help counteract brassy tones on brown hair. It is a great solution for correcting brass on both natural and highlighted brunette hair.

“Redken Color Extend Graydiant is a wonderful toning shampoo for natural or color-treated gray and silver hair,” says Skinner, “ Gray and silver hair can sometimes experience yellow tones, and Graydiant’s purple formula helps to counteract that. It is also strengthening and helps to soften that coarse texture that naturally gray hair can have.”