Hairdressing How-To: Putting Foils in Hair - Tips, Tricks, Advice and Know-How for Colouring Hair with Foils!

In the hairdressing world, foils are commonly used to add highlights to a client's hair. Very few people other than hair artists know the other secret uses for foils! The truth is that hairdressing foil is a very versatile tool when doing hair and can be used for several different tasks to create an array of interesting looks. The right way to apply foils to the head is as follows.

1. Section off the hair that you wish to encase in foils. This can involve artfully grabbing chunks of the hair or weaving the end of a tailcomb through the hair to create natural-looking highlights. It is not recommended that you section large chunks of hair, but use multiple foils instead so as to maximise the amount of roots that the foil covers.

2. When you have the section of hair that you wish to foil, temporarily secure it with a hairdressing barette and cut a length of hairdressing foil. You are welcome to use a piece of foil that is less than double the length of the sectioned hair, but the hair will need to be folded or tucked up inside the foil. Be careful while doing this so as not to bend the hair and leave a visible crease in the dye.

3. Place one end of the foil at the base, under of the section of hair, preferably with the silver side facing up, although the foil can be used either way.

4. Apply the hair colourant that you are using, providing that it is safe to use with metal, with a tinting comb. Make sure to thoroughly coat the hair.

5.  To wrap up the foil, begin by bringing the bottom of the hairdressing foil to meet the top. It will take practice to get this perfect! Make sure the foil is covering as much of the roots of the hair as possible to as to prevent the dye getting onto the other hair. Do not press to hard when you bring the ends of the foil together or you will cause a colour leakage.

6. Fold the sides over. Don't worry if the foil looks messy at this stage, practice is required to make a perfectly folded foil. If the hair is long you may wish to gently roll the foil up from the bottom upward to the scalp.

7. Repeat steps 1-6 until all the hair you desire to be dyed is encased in foils. If attempting this on your own hair, especially if your hair is long, you may need the help of a friend the first couple of times. To ensure that all your foils are the same colour after a period of time, you may want to section off all the pieces of hair you want dyed first, then quickly work to dye and wrap them up.

However, foils aren't only used for dying sections of hair. Here are just a few professional tips and tricks for using foils which are extremely handy for DIY, at-home hair colouring sessions.

Exclusion:

Foils are generally used if you only want to dye a few bits of your hair. However, if you wish to dye the bulk of your hair and protect a few bits from being processed, foils are also great. You can simply section off the hair you want to keep the same and put them in foils using the same procedure above, without adding the dye. Then you can proceed to dye the remainder of your loose hair, working carefully around the foils.

Bleaching:

If parts of your hair are already bleached but you want to bleach the rest, or neighbouring sections of your hair, then the exclusion method can also be used. This trick is excellent for protecting hair that has been damaged from overprocessing with bleach, in order to avoid a chemical haircut. If you are colouring the rest of your hair, the bleached parts should also be covered to be saved from processing, if you really wish to keep them. Otherwise, if you choose to colour over bleach-damaged hair, you may end up with a chemical haircut!

Regrowth Applications:

Foils are great to use with regrowth applications if you don't wish to dye over your previously-dyed hair. This is especially true for highlights as overlapping more bleach on top of your previous highlights will lighten your hair further and lead to a slight 'stripey' effect. You can use the exclusion method for this.

Root Protection:

When excluding hair from a process using foils you may find it hard to cover the roots with the foil, and this may become a cause for worry. One handy piece of equipment in this case is your conditioner! Using your tinting comb brush some conditioner onto the roots of your hair to prevent them from being processed. You can also apply it to your eyebrows in case an accident, involving hair falling in your face, occurs.