Formulating From the Base Up With Life Color Plus
Formulating is a sequence, and the order is not negotiable. Depth before tone, base before target, coverage before fashion. Get the order right and a 160-shade range becomes navigable; get it wrong and you are choosing shades that look nice on a chart and behave unpredictably on a head.
The sequence
| Step | The question | What it settles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Where is the hair now? | Base level, at the root, in daylight |
| 2 | How much white? | Whether a natural joins the formula, and at what ratio |
| 3 | What depth are we going to? | The first digit — and whether lift is needed at all |
| 4 | What tone? | The reflect — everything after the point |
| 5 | Which developer, which ratio? | Follows from steps 2 and 3, not from habit |
Most formulation errors are order errors. Choosing the tone first and then working out how to reach it backwards is how a client ends up with a beautiful reflect at the wrong depth — which reads as "not what I asked for" even when the colour itself is lovely.
Step 1 and 2: what you have
Read the base at the root, where the hair is virgin, and in daylight rather than under salon lighting. The ends are not the base; they are a colour history.
Assess white by section, because heads are not uniform. The temples usually run ahead of the crown, and you formulate for the heaviest section. The threshold that matters is 50%:
- Up to 50% white — the desired shade alone, standard 1:1.5, plus five minutes on the development time.
- 50–100% white — half desired shade, half natural at the same depth, mixed 1:1, with 20 volume for the full 45 minutes.
That is the manufacturer's protocol, set out in the grey coverage guide.
Step 3: depth, and be honest about lift
Depth is the first digit, and it is where the realism happens.
A permanent colour lifts modestly. It is not a lightener. Twenty volume gives up to two tones; 30 volume gives two to three. If the client's target is four or five levels lighter, that is the high-lift series at 1:2, or a lightening service — not a bigger developer on an ordinary shade.
And going darker is its own discipline, because lightened hair has no warmth for the new depth to sit on. That is going darker with Life Color Plus.
Step 4: tone, read left to right
Everything after the point is the reflect, and it reads in descending order of dominance. In 7.43, the 4 is the copper doing most of the work and the 3 is a gold modifying it.
Two conventions do most of the heavy lifting once you know them:
- A doubled digit means intensified. 7.44 is a stronger copper than 7.4; 6.666 is the most saturated red in the range; .00 is an intensified natural.
- The second digit steers. A .13 is an ash softened with gold — cool direction without the deadness. A .31 is a gold held in check by ash.
The full map is in the shade chart guide, and the families are broken down across the naturals, the ash series and the warm side.
Step 5: the developer follows
Developer is a consequence of steps 2 and 3, never a habit. Ten volume deposits with no lift; 20 covers white and lifts up to two tones; 30 gives two to three; 30 or 40 pairs with the superlighteners. The full table is in the developer article, and the three ratios are collected in mixing ratios in practice.
A worked example
Client: natural level 6, about 70% white at the temples, wants to stay her depth with a bit of warmth.
1. Base is a 6. 2. Over 50% white — so half the mix is a natural, at 1:1.
3. Depth stays at 6 — no lift required. 4. "A bit of warmth" is a gold direction, so a 6.35 rather than a 6.3 if she wants richness.
5. Twenty volume, 1:1, full 45 minutes, temples first. The mix is 50ml of 6.35 + 50ml of 6.0 + 100ml of 20 vol — which is the manufacturer's own worked example.
Then write it down
Shades and proportions, developer and ratio, timing, base level and white percentage on the day, and what the result actually did. A formula card without the base level on it is unusable in a year's time, because you will not know whether the formula stopped working or the client changed.
And because every one of the 160 variants is £3.49, none of these decisions is a cost decision. You can formulate for the head rather than for the tubes you happen to have open — which is genuinely unusual in professional colour.
For formulating
Life Color Plus, 160 shades at £3.49 →
Cream Developer, four strengths, £3.65 →
The salon shade chart →
Formulating — part 2 of 5.
Previously: ← Reading the hair, not the photo
Next: The developer decision →
Ratios, protocols and the worked example are the manufacturer's own published figures. Professional product for salon use only.
-
Posted in
developer, formulating, Life Color Plus, technical, trade
