Rainbow Hair, Vivid Dye Colours and Unicorn Manes

Mykey O’Halloran aka on insta as @unicorn_manes_bymykey is an Educator and Ambassador for Manic Panic & is a fellow Australian hairdresser who lives and breathes colour.

• Learn what level & undertone is needed for each vivid colour of the rainbow (not all colours need a white base)
• Learn how to achieve Rainbow hair
• Learn how to create mermaid hair and opal iridescent colours in hair
• Learn more about unicorn hair application, client consultations and how to best prepare hair for these services
• Test strands – we chat why they are essential before bleaching client hair
• Plus so much more is shared in this incredible interview

Show notes for episode 36

we dive deep into colour theory and biz tips for vivid work

Mykey is a world renowned Educator and Ambassador for Manic Panic & is a fellow Australian hairdresser who lives and breathes colour. If you don’t already know, he is a rainbow lover and unicorn painter whose work attracts international attention with custom wig orders being shipped out to celebrity performers plus keeps his salon clients coming back for me. I know that our listeners will learn such incredible tips from an exceptionally talented artist in this episode.

He has more than 117,000 followers on instagram & his username sparks joy before you have time to scroll through his feed. I wanted to find an Expert for our listeners that are seeking to up their game with vivids and produce next level colours for their clients, so of course I reached out to Mykey O’Halloran aka on insta as @unicorn_manes_bymykey

The episode goes for a little over an hour, which is a longer interview than my previous episodes. So many hot tips and gems are shared to help you learn in great depth how to paint brights and know-why with the confidence to know-how every single time.

In summary we discuss:

• Should we pre-consult bleach and vivid hair colour requests?
•  Are rainbow clients high commitment clients?
• Multiple bookings for the future commitment cycle to ensure how to maintain the bleach base without banding and to be sure you can priotise the booking allocations for these regular clients
• We discuss trending Pastel unicorn dreams, mermaid hair, rainbow hair and pastel irridescent technqiues
• We chat about the wonderful tool Color Map for Hairdressers, which helps you and your clients have predicatble colour results when using this swatch book for colour testing. Listen to episode 29 of the Colour Kristina Talks Podcast to learn more about Color Map.  I interview the creator of this product Josh Comeaux
• Mykey gives an in-depth insight into the importance of being honest with clients with all aspects of Vivid work (fade, changeability, rebooking)

want to learn the levels and undertones for every vivid?

This is the most asked question by hairdressers and clients alike. How light do I need to be to paint a particular colour? Sometimes we get it right as hairdressers and other times it's not light enough to paint the colour we try to paint on. Colour Theory 101 is a necessary consideration, however direct dyes are a little different than classic colours when considering lift or lightening.

Lifting hair to a Level 9 gets hair to the right porosity and the right level for every vivid. Hair needs the bleach to accept the direct dye load with predictable results.

Read the list below for your cheat sheet for every colour of the rainbow:

• RED –  Red works best on prelightened Levels 6-10 (depends on brightness desired by you an client how light you need to take the hair)
• ORANGE – Orange Vivids work well on Levels 8-10 (depends on brightness desired by you an client how light you need to take the hair)
• YELLOW – Level 8-10
• GREEN – Level 9-10
• BLUE – Baby blue must be lifted to a level 10 or if it's a 9 it needs to be pretoned to create an ash base
• INDIGO – Darker Blue Based Violet needs to be applied on light bases or consider what undertone has been exposed if you need to pretone before applying this to counteract unwanted warmth
• VIOLET – Purple can be applied on Level 8 or lighter, however if on a Level 8 make sure you add fuchssia to a purple to get more coverage