How to restore and repair colour treated hair

Colour treatments can change your hair’s natural structure, weakening it and leaving it vulnerable to damage caused by everyday life. But if you know what to watch out for, you can make choices that protect your hair - including finding the right professional treatments.

We all want vibrant, healthy-looking hair when we visit the salon for a colour treatment, right? But there are many challenges that stand in the way of getting the results we’re looking for. These environmental and lifestyle stressors make up what is known as the ‘hair exposome’.

What is the hair exposome?

The hair exposome is the name we give to the collection of factors around us that can impact our hair health. This ranges from man-made stressors like pollution to individual activity like blowdrying or using curling tongs, and even natural variables like sunlight.

Pollution

Pollution includes everything from particles like soot, smoke and dust to compounds that can evaporate into the air from things like car exhausts and industrial processes. Pollutants penetrate the hair, causing dryness, breakage, and dullness.

Metals

Metals that exist in the water you use to wash your hair, can build up in the hair fibre over time. This makes your hair rough, dry, and prone to breaking, and in some cases causes uneven colour results and damage.

UV radiation

Radiation from the sun can impact your hair in different ways. UVB rays damage the hair’s surface, while UVA rays fade colour and weaken the hair from within. The result is that both natural and dyed colours can fade, leaving your hair looking less vibrant.

Heat styling

Frequently using styling tools that direct large and intense amounts of heat to your hair can cause damage by dehydrating it and changing the structure of the keratin. Damaging this important protein eventually weakens your hair and reduces elasticity.

Chemical treatment

If you use chemical treatments like perms or lightening on your hair, you might not realise that they can actually cause damage to the hair’s structure, breaking important bonds and opening up the hair structure, which makes it more vulnerable to damage.

Together, this reduces your hair’s natural defenses, leaving it more susceptible to the external stressors that make up the hair exposome. As a result, you might see:

Uneven texture and patchy colour
Dryness, frizziness and flyaway hair
Brittleness and split ends
Dullness and rough textured hair
Colour fading and lack of shine
Limp, lifeless and unhealthy looking hair

Key challenges facing colour treated hair

Repeated colouring and lightening triggers chemical processes that can fundamentally alter your hair’s structure. The three major problems caused are:

Cuticle damage
Increased porosity
Protein alteration

How to protect your coloured hair

The best way to keep your colour vibrant for longer is to make sure your hair is as healthy as possible. That means you’ll need to consider three things:

1. Detoxifying

Getting rid of any build up of metals and other pollutants on your hair

2. Restoring

Replacing essential building blocks to your hair, such as lipids and proteins

3. Protecting

Creating a barrier for your hair against future harm from the hair exposome

Coming soon: our new treatment for colour-treated hair

The experts in the Davines scientific lab have been studying the hair exposome to better understand how to detoxify, restore and protect colour-treated hair. The result is a new in-salon service designed to do just that - plus an exciting new product to add to your home hair routine.

Keep an eye out for the launch!