Color Enhancing Shampoo & Highlights

Brunette with wet hair and a tube of shampoo — Photo: Lopolo/Shutterstock

Q: I want to use a color enhancing shampoo for brunettes, but I have blonde highlights at the front of my hair! Would the shampoo affect my highlights?

A: The amount of tint contained in color-enhancing shampoos is minimal, but it could affect the color of your highlights over repeated uses (depending on the porosity of the highlighted hair).

However, you can counter possible color absorption by applying conditioner to the highlights (if they are big enough that you can isolate them) and clipping them out of the way, before using the shampoo.

If the highlights are too diffuse to be isolated, or there are too many to make doing this practical, I suggest that you try the shampoo and if you find the highlights to be too heavily affected, discontinue using it. The color in these enhancing shampoos is temporary color and the effects will dissipate when you stop using them.

However, you may find that the shampoos effects aren't that noticeable in your highlights, and that the highlights only become slightly more subdued and subtle. It may be an effect you can live with. In this case, provided you like the results on the rest of your hair, you may be willing to accept the slight change in the highlights. Either way, the color-enhancing shampoo shouldn't cause any permanent color change in the highlights.

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See also:

Highlights

Hair porosity

If you wash your hair every other day, can your highlights come out?