Haircolor Basics: Hair Pigment Categories

Quite simply hair coloring is the science and art of altering the color of the hair. 
The natural color of human hair is first and leading directly tied to heritable factors.  As scientists have verified, hair color is an inherited characteristic. 

For any person, either expert hair colorist, hairdresser, barber or hair consumer to be successful in changing hair color, it is important that the base hair color and pigmentation is understood.  It is also essential to understand other factors connected to coloring hair including the basic hair texture, porosity and elasticity.

Hair texture refers to the basic level of roughness or fineness of the hair.

Friends and DIRT star Courteney Cox, accorind to her celebrity hair designer Robert Hallowell, prefers to wear her natural medium brown hair (Level 3 or 4) in a rich shade of flat black (Level 1) created by Robert with a Goldwell color product.

How Hair Pigment Is Derived

The cortex of the hair contains the basic coloring matters, miniature grains of melanin or pigment.

Melanin has two possible manifestations.  Eumelanin, which has an oval or egg-shaped shape is found in black and brunette hair and is a dark color.  The higher attention of eumelanin, the darker the hair. 

Phaeomelanin is a light pigment that is found in fair-haired and red hair.  The higher the concentration of phaeomelanin, the lighter the hair.  Dissimilar eumelanin, phaeomelanin is smaller, partly oval and has a rod shape. 

A mixture of the two different pigments can be found at the same time in lots of people.  Melanin an its existence is hereditarily predetermined.  White hair contains no melanin at all and gray hair contains only some melanin granules.  Gray hair melanin is usually spread out throughout the entire head of hair.

Lots of people's hair contains a mixture of the two: the more eumelanin there is in the mixture, the darker is the hair. The mixture (and the shade) varies not only from one person to another, but also across one person's head.   

Hair color professionals study the theory of color pigment.  It is only through understanding hair pigments and correct color formulations that the correct color can be selected and applied to hair color customers.

Even though some scientists consider that the derivation of pigment is probably derived from colo-forming substances in the blood. The color of the hair, light or dark, depends upon the color and amount of the grains of pigment it contains.

Hair color is created by the movement of light rays either as they are engrossed or reflected by non-natural pigment added to the hair in the tinting process, or by natural hair pigment.

Note:  Actress Pamela Anderson is famed for her white blonde hair which her sometime celeb hairdresser, Ken Paves, gives details she "colors at home with a box of hair color".  Pamela's white blonde hair would be classified as a Level 10.

Natural hair color is created by the reflection or assimilation of light rays by melanin.  The size, amount and distribution of melanin determine the ultimate hair color.  Great numbers of large melanin molecules distributed throughout the cortext to make different colors.  The various combinations in the size, amount and distribution of melanin creates all natural hair color