Life Color Plus Correctors and Toners: 0.22, 0.44, 0.66 and the Six Pure Tones

Nine variants in the range have no depth at all — three correctors and six pure toners. They are the smallest group and the one that decides whether the other 151 land where you intended. They also do two completely different jobs, which is the thing most often got wrong.

The distinction, first

Reaching for a toner when you needed a corrector — or the reverse — is the source of a great many results that come out "not quite right" without anyone being able to say why.

The three correctors

They are coded from depth zero because they carry tone and nothing else: 0.22 violet, 0.44 copper, 0.66 red. All three use doubled digits, which is the range's signal for intensity — these are concentrated.

What they are for:

• Holding a result away from a cast you do not want. A formula you know will pull too warm on a particular head can be steered with 0.22.
• Intensifying a reflect on hair that eats it. Some heads swallow copper. Adding 0.44 to a copper formula pushes it further than moving up to the doubled shade alone.
• Putting warmth back into a result heading somewhere flat. 0.66 into a formula that would otherwise land dull.

The six toners

Listed by colour rather than by code, and every one is £3.49 like the rest of the range:

Half the set exists to add warmth rather than remove it, which is worth noticing. An over-toned blonde that has gone grey and lifeless is as much a correction job as a brassy one — and it is one you caused rather than one the client walked in with.

Toning is a deposit job, so use low volume

You are not lifting. You are placing tone on hair that has already given up its pigment.

On this line, 10 volume (3%) is the tone-on-tone, deposit-only option with no lift, over a 30–40 minute development — the developer table is in the developer article. There is also a dedicated Life Color Tone on Tone cream developer at £3.56 for exactly this work.

Reaching for 20 volume to make a toner "grab" does the opposite of what you want: it lifts the hair you have just carefully lightened, exposes fresh warmth underneath, and leaves you warmer than when you started.

Two decisions, not one

Formulating a tone is two separate choices, and conflating them is where results go wrong:

1. Depth — set by where your lift finished. A toner does not lift, so you can match it or go darker; you cannot go lighter.
2. Reflect — chosen by what you need to cancel, using the pairs above.

Decide the depth before you look at a single tone. If the lift landed at a 9 and the client wants a level 7 result, that is a depth decision that changes which product you reach for entirely — and it changes the finished look far more than which reflect you pick. Formulating from the base up works through the sequence.

Watch it, and stop early

Pre-lightened hair is porous, takes tone fast, and takes it unevenly wherever the lift was uneven. Two habits are worth more than any product choice:

• Watch it develop rather than setting a timer and walking away. That is the point of a low-volume deposit — you can see it happening.
• Stop slightly before you think you should. Tone keeps developing while you rinse, and an over-toned result is the harder fix: under-toned, you tone again; over-toned, you are stripping pigment from hair that has already been through a lift today.

The shade range in depth — part 5 of 5.
Previously: ← The 900 and 12 series
Start the series: The naturals →

Colour-wheel neutralisation is standard professional convention. Shade availability and prices as at the time of writing. Professional product for salon use only.