Color wheel can be very effective tool when it comes to determining what color you’re aiming for. With bleaching and toning process, also known as double-process, it’s vital to know what hair color you’re going to use on your bleached hair. It’s all about colors and what works. For example, you may notice some hair colors include bases such as violet, blue-violet, green, yellow and gold. You may wonder what the heck do they mean? They’re used as a guide to let you know what kind of results you’ll get.

For example, if you have banana peel yellow hair and you want a soft and natural looking blonde, use a blonde tint with violet base. Blonde tint with violet base will get you a natural looking light blonde.

If you have orange hair to begin with, a blue-based tint will get you a neutral color but it will be either dark or medium blonde. To get a really light blonde color you will have to bleach to banana peel yellow or pale yellow. Sometimes a blue-based toner made for very light hair will work on pale yellow hair because it will only make it look more drab blonde (common in many cool blonde shades). Drab isn’t same as dull or dead, it just meant it’s not as bright as gold.

If you have strong yellow undertones, any violet, blue-violet or blue based toners will tone them down. That’s where Born Blonde toners come in picture.

If you have warm skin tone, you can get away with gold and yellow based toners because they’re made for warm skin tones and will look good in golden-blonde shades (think of Nicole Kidman, who has such warm fair skin tone and looks great with golden-blonde shades). If you have cool skin tone (olive, sallow or very fair with reddish undertones) you are better off with cool shades. The bases really help in making your decisions and what kind of goal you want. Beware – if you have yellow hair and use yellow or gold-based color, your hair will turn out even worse yellow or very brassy looking. Goes true if using very strong blue-based toner not made for light blondes on pale yellow hair can turn it green. Violet on orange hair will not work either. Ash blondes have violet, blue-violet or sometimes green base. Ash blondes are very cool or cold, and it’s ideal to bleach to pale yellow to achieve very cool shade because any remaining yellows will peek through, which is considered as warm, not cool. Keep this in mind.

If you have reddish hair you can tone it down with green-based toner. Complementary colors will always work. Some colors include odd combo of bases – such as yellow-violet base. This is probably means it is a mixture of cool and warm. Violet to tone down the yellow hair, and yellow is to let some yellow to peek through to exhibit some warmth rather than to make it really drab or ashy.

If you want to achieve platinum blonde, it is recommended to bleach to pale yellow to almost white (be careful when you do this) and then use platinum blonde toner or any of lightest blonde shades. It will be very light so make sure your skintone looks best with it and isn’t for everyone.