What Does Hair Toner Do To Highlights

In this post I wanted to focus on what does hair toner do to highlights. I’m sure you have heard hair stylists mention “toner”, if you have ever coloured your hair at a salon, but you have no idea what it actually does. The reason I think it’s important to know what hair toner is and how it works is because it actually helps to maintain hair colour in the long-run without damaging it.

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What is hair toner?

So, what is hair toner? It is essentially a chemical (don’t be afraid of the word “chemical”) that acts like a topcoat for hair. Here’s an easy way to think about it: imagine you have freshly painted nails in a brown colour (like your hair might be). Now, for the top coat you can choose from the following finishes: matte, glossy, glitter, multicolour dual tones etc. The base colour brown remains the same. but with the top coat your nails now has a different finish aka tone.

To keep the analogy going, the main “finishes” you can achieve with hair toner are: warm, cool and neutral.

It’s simple colour wheel theory. Based on what tone you want to achieve, hair stylists will mix up a toner formula which consists of tones to cancel out the tone you don’t want. So, green cancels red tones; blue cancels orange tones; and purple cancels yellow tones. For brown and blonde hair tones, blue and purple toner is the most popular.

You should also be aware that toners are also available in shades similar to hair dye like brown, blonde, red etc, but they are formulated to coat hair and not alter the pigment, so they eventually fade. Hair stylists will often use a combination of blue/purple with browns/blondes to create the right tone for you.

Toners can also add a healthy shine (hence the term “gloss”) to dull hair.

My two cents here: leave it to the pros. I wouldn’t try hair toner at home or on my own.

Toner has a few different names: gloss, glaze, and demi-permanent colour, but they all mean the same thing.

What’s the difference between hair dye and toner?

Hair dye changes the colour (aka pigment) of your hair. For example, dying black hair red or dying blonde hair brown. Hair dyes tend to be permanent and grows out.

Toner changes the tone of your hair. For example, toning warm brown down to a cool brown shade. Or toning brassy blonde highlights to a neutral blonde like below. Toners last 6-8 weeks and fade away, leaving behind the original base colour.

The other important difference is that dye can lighten or darken hair colour while toner will maintain or darken hair colour with a warm, cool or neutral tone — it cannot lighten colour.

Is toner bad for your hair?

Let’s call a spade a spade. Doing any kind of chemical treatment or process is bad for hair. But, the level can be very less or a lot, depending on what you’re getting done.

That being said, toner is not that bad for hair because it only coats hair and eventually fades away; it doesn’t lift or lighten hair like bleach and permanent colour, which can cause more long-term damage to hair.

How long does toner last in hair?

Hair toner lasts anywhere from 4-8 weeks depending on how often you shampoo and how you take care of your hair. Getting a tone or gloss isn’t very expensive: it costs $50-$100 and takes about 20 minutes to process.

Hair Toner: Before and After

Here’s a few different hair looks you can achieve with hair toner after your hair is coloured or highlighted.

The first gallery shows my hair about 2 months after getting blonde highlights. As you can see, my hair turned very brassy and orange. So, I asked my hair stylist to neutralize the brassiness of the blonde highlights i.e removing the orange tone to leave behind a neutral blonde.

The second time is 9 months after I got my blonde baby highlights. I’ve done a few toner sessions in between, so now my hair has 3 different tones of blonde, brown and my original brown-black hair growing out quite far too. To even out the varying tones, I asked my hair stylist to go dark, so my hair has one even tone. So, you’ll notice the brown tones from my base colour are still slightly visible, but they are darker and muted (aka neutral).