Black and White what are they?

Ok so we get a lot of confusion about this point. Some people might think, well they're just another colour but that's wrong. Black and white aren't colours, they're shades!

What? Well they're not true colours in that there's no such thing as a pure white or a pure black. Take a black pen out of your stationery set. Scribble a dot in the middle of some paper then add a drop of water to it. Let it dry and look closely at the area that got wet. The ink spreads out and separates the colours. You'll see blues and reds and greens, all sorts! Because the pen company used several colours to achieve a "true black" for your pen. Just like hair dye!

Black hair dyess are made of a blue or green colour usually. That's why when they fade you'll notice that in lighter sections of your hair you'll get green parts showing up. It's not a fault with the dye and there's nothing wrong with your hair. It's just that your hair has a yellow base colour to it and if the black is made from blue then it mixes with the yellow and turns green.

But my hair is naturally black so it can't be yellow based! Oh really? Bleach it and see. Everyone's hair goes through stages during bleaching. Darker hair turns orange, then yellow then with a little help from a toner you can turn "white". White is a shade, just like black. It's made by diluting a colour to it's thinnest point. Thus making it appear white. So anyone with dyed white hair actually has a very, very pale yelow with a toner on top. Mixing a lilac toner with pale yellow hair makes it a neutral brown, extremely pale but the colour is still there.

So how do I dye my hair grey like a Cheshire Cat? Well we had someone actually do this! They mixed 70% silver with 30% ebony and made a lovely dark grey. They added turquoise stripes and it looked amazing! The problem is that silver is already diluted and mixing it with ebony diluted the ebony dye so a diluted dye, diluting a black dye.... It all washed out in about 3 washes. So it's acheivable but not practical.

But my paint pot has black and white and I mix those to make grey, why not hair dye? Well it's quite simple really. Paints are made with each pigment account for in the right percentage. They use the colour wheel to neutralise each pigment, making a black that can be mixed with white to make grey.

To do this with hair dye you'd have to account for the exact percentage of yellow in your hair, the exact percentage of blue in your black dye and you'd have to counter it with the exact percentage of red to neatralise them both. Not only is this tricky but reds are hard to stick to your hair, which is why most black ink is made with red and most black hair dye is made with blue. Add that to the fact that you want to turn your hair grey and you have to account for the lightening process too.

Grandma has white hair so ner! Actually "grandma" has transparent hair, so ner to you too! As we get older our bodies start to shut down the non necessary processes to help keep everything else in working order. Hair colour isn't necessary so the body stops making it. This makes the hair shaft completely lacking in colour. It's like glass! Because the hair is made of cuticles and has a shaft down the centre you have a prism effect. When the light shines through the hair shaft all the colours of the prism combine to make the only true white there is, refracted light. What you're seeing isn't white hair it's white light. It's literally a trick of the light. A combination of every colour in the world, mixed in light beams to make a brilliant glare. So in fact, although it's a light effect "grandma" probably has the most colourful hair there is! It's literally every colour in the rainbow! ;D

Well, that's the Matty Science Bit for now. I hope that's helped someone who's looking for black, white or grey hair. If anyone has any questions that I missed, let me know!