How is toning different from coloring – and is it different?

Toning and coloring may seem like similar processes, but they serve different purposes when it comes to hair. Understanding the differences between these two techniques can help you make the right choice for your hair goals.

Toning focuses on enhancing and adjusting the natural shade of your hair, whereas coloring involves changing the color of your hair at its base. It is particularly helpful for balancing out undesirable tones that result from coloring or bleaching.

Understanding the differences between toning and coloring can help you choose the right tone and style for your hair, whether you’re looking for a subtle adjustment or a dramatic makeover.

What is hair toning and coloring?

Some people believe that the primary characteristic of hair coloring is the drastic alteration of the hair’s color, which has an intense impact on the structure of the hair. However, it’s even more fascinating! Put succinctly, coloring is any toning, but toning is not coloring. Though it may sound philosophical, everything is really quite straightforward.

Tonning

Using a semi-permanent dye on bleached hair, toning (sometimes incorrectly referred to as "toning," but we are better than cars!) is a coloring technique. Curls respond well to these types of dyes.

Toning is essentially giving highlighted hair a new hue. Toning is sometimes referred to as "adding a shade" to natural hair, even though the shade essentially stays the same. Yet we still refer to this procedure as coloring. It’s just that a semi-permanent dye can be used to color in these situations.

Alexey Nagorsky

Coloring

Any process that involves the use of dye is known as hair coloring. as well as toning. As it happens, the methods are essentially the same.

These are staining procedures; they cover every single one related to the dye, all in all. Additionally, tinting is conditionally referred to as only providing a shade of bleached strands when it is tinted on top, i.e., when you were made to highlight. We’ll refer to everything else as staining.

Alexey Nagorsky

Despite their apparent similarities, coloring and toning have different uses in hair care. Strong pigments are used in coloring to alter your hair’s natural color and produce long-lasting effects. In contrast, toning is a softer procedure that adds sheen or removes undesirable colors while enhancing or neutralizing particular tones in hair that has already been colored. Toning usually involves less intense color adjustment than full coloring, but it doesn’t completely change the natural hair color as much. Selecting the best treatment for your hair goals can be made easier if you are aware of these variations.

The difference between services

It is the same staining in toning. The distinction in the method and source material is tinted hair, which is achieved with semi-permanent dye. We refer to everything else as staining. Which is superior?

For instance, you are staining your hair if it is gray. It will also stain if you have natural hair and you wish to change the shade, say to make it lighter (but only if lighter up to 3 tones). It’s not tinting either if you completely bleached your hair and then applied dye on top; that’s staining. That is, dying the hair a different color.

Alexey Nagorsky

Toning is what many girls refer to as coloring their natural hair in order to bring out the shade, add shine, or balance out the warm background of lightening that develops when the hair fades in the sun. This is actually coloring as well; it’s just coloring with a different kind of dye—semi-permanent coloring.

Alexey Nagorsky

Composition of paints

In actuality, coloring and toning are different in the dyes used, not in the artwork. Only semi-permanent dyes are used for toning; permanent and semi-permanent dyes are used for coloring. What makes the difference?

Permanent coloring never gets darker. It will still lighten your hair even if you use a permanent dye with a low three percent oxidant, which can only create one tone in the maximum amount of hair.

Alexey Nagorskiy

It"s just that in permanent dyes the processes of lightening and coloring occur in parallel. These two processes are concentrated in one tube, and when you apply any permanent dye to your hair, you have a process of lightening your hair (that is, destroying the natural pigment) and introducing artificial pigment into your hair. Accordingly, when the artificial pigment begins to gradually break down and wash out of your hair, you will see the background of lightening, that is, the result of the lightening process of this very permanent dye. The higher the oxidant process in a given dye, the more tone levels rise, the more the lightening process goes and the lesser the polymerization process of this pigment. That is, you will see lighter shades on your hair in the process of destruction and washing out of the artificial pigment.

Alexey Nagorsky

A semi-permanent dye, unlike a permanent one, does not have such a strong lightening ability. There are semi-permanent dyes that can lighten hair by a maximum of one and a half tones, there are semi-permanent dyes with an acidic pH that do not lighten hair at all, that is, they can only give hair a tint or darken it a little. If we are talking about a girl with natural hair coming to tone it, it will be coloring. She just calls it “toning”, because for many girls with natural hair the word “coloring” is a little scary. It scares them because coloring is forever, and you have to color your hair constantly. In this regard, semi -permanent dye is comfortable in that due to a very weak degree of clarification or a complete absence of clarifying ability, you will not see the border when growing.

Alexey Nagorskiy

Durability

Permanent and semi-permanent hair dyes behave differently over time and operate at different levels of the hair. Their composition is to blame for this.

The cortex, or middle section of the hair, is where the permanent dye pigment is formed; this is a deeper location for the pigment. The cuticular layer, or our hair’s outer layer, is where semi-permanent dye acts. When working with semi-permanent pigments, we do not observe the manifestation of an intense lightening background as we would when working with permanent dyes because the lightening process either does not occur or occurs insignificantly. As a result, when growing hair, the boundaries will either be completely invisible or very slight compared to when using permanent dye.

Alexey Nagorsky

We can always see a clear strip on the roots a month after using a permanent permanent dye, marking the boundary between the naturally grown roots of the hair and the previously dyed hair. Additionally, you can go much longer without this distinct border during regrowth after dying with a semi-permanent dye. This is the specific way that dyes differ from one another.

Alexey Nagorsky

What is better to choose: toning or dyeing?

Toning is therefore a technique used exclusively on highlighted hair and exclusively with semi-permanent dye. In order to avoid unintentionally lightening the natural base, it is used. It is understandable why this dyeing technique is popular when you want to give your hair a tone that is nearly natural.

Hair can always be made lighter with permanent dye. Applying it to highlighted hair will cause the natural hair that wasn’t highlighted to be painted over in addition to the lighter sections. You will therefore get the desired shade on the lighter strands, but there won’t be enough pigment from this dye on natural hair. The likelihood is that all you will get are a few erratic warm tones because this dye’s strength is insufficient to counteract the natural hair’s lightening background.

Alexey Nagorsky

• coverage gray hair,
• lightening of natural hair up to 3 tone levels,
• changing the color of dyed hair,
• changing the color of previously completely bleached hair,
• enhancing the color of natural hair.

Although they may appear similar, coloring and toning have different effects on your hair. Toning is a more understated way to enhance or modify the shade of the hair, whereas coloring offers a permanent or semi-permanent change.

For people who want to enhance their color without going too bold, toning is ideal. It gives hair a polished finish by helping to balance out unwanted tones, particularly in highlighted or bleached hair.

Conversely, coloring is for those who want a more dramatic change, like adding a new color or hiding gray areas. Depending on the look you’re going for and your comfort level with maintenance, each approach has a place.

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