D.I.Y. Sombre – We colour the hair at home. Useful tricks and tips

Hi girls,

Today’s post is dedicated to all the hairmaniacs out there. I’m going to devote it to showing you the Know-How of performing sombre at home. And what is that? This is lightening up and layering hair in such a way to obtain strands resembling natural reflexes created by the sun. Sombre combines colouring individual strands with lightening up the hair ends.

Sombre – What items to use?

So as to gift strands with a lighter shade, you can use the regular dyes, lighteners or a peroxide developer. If you are going to perform sombre on natural hair, use dyes or lighteners. If you have coloured the hair before, it’d be enough to use just a lightener. Remember that each product can change the colour of your strands four tones down or up (in other words, the hair can turn darker or lighter). As far as I’m concerned, low porosity hair is the hardest to colour since the tightly bound cuticle layer doesn’t allow the pigment to penetrate through the hair shaft. The exact opposite is high porosity hair. Unfortunately, during such a procedure, no matter if colouring or lightening, high porosity hair is severely damaged.

Sombre – How to do it?

While applying sombre, what is really crucial are the technique of dye application, hair dividing and the skilful usage of hairdresser’s items. To obtain natural effects, you have to separate a lot of V-shaped strands which thickness doesn’t exceed 1 cm (0,4′). Each of the strand has to be ‘stretched’ downwards so as to make putting on the dye easier. The lightening up mixture can be applied in two ways. The first method depends on colouring the sides of a separated strand. The second method is about dying the sides and the centre of a strand. Obviously, you can combine both the methods, or you can use the first method only on the back section and the second method to the sides. But what are the sections?

Sections – How to divide hair?

Before you proceed with sombre, divide the hair into four sections: back, upper and two sides. The back section is limited by the lines you have laid over your ears and the line that runs across the centre of your head. Next, divide the back section into two sub-sections: run a vertical line in the middle of the back section. Then, create the remaining sections. The side sections are located only above the ears. From the top, they are separated with the line: upper part of the forehead – the hair line. The upper section is the hair that remains left after all the other sections have been created.

How to apply dye to the sections?

This is a really simple task. More troublesome is the sectioning of hair. When you have prepared the mixture of dyes and highlighters, apply it to the strands following the scheme that I’m going to present you with. Let’s start from the upper and side sections since it’ll be easier that way. Apply the dye to the strands that are located at the end of each section, so to the lower hair sections. During applying sombre to the side sections, start from painting the strands located right above the hair. When colouring the upper section, head towards the forehead.

What about the back section? You’ve already divided it into two sub-sections, haven’t you? Start the colouring from the strands located at the bottom and move upwards. Take a bottom strands from the left sub-section and then from the right sub-section. Wrap them with foil and start colouring another hair strands. Apply the dye to the left sub-section strand and then to the right sub-section. After a few hours of the artistic work, your new hairstyle is ready.