At home, the maintenance list is short and genuinely effective: wash less often than feels natural, use lukewarm rather than hot water, add a colour-safe conditioner or mask weekly, and rinse the last time with the coolest water you can stand. Heat styling above what you actually need is the fastest way to strip warmth out of a new colour, so turn the temperature down a notch and use a heat protectant every single time.
Will going darker make my hair look flat and heavy?
It can, if the colour is applied at one uniform depth from root to tip, and especially if your hair is fine or one length. Ask for dimension built in — a softer root, a few lighter pieces around the face, or a gloss with some warmth in it rather than a solid matte tone — and ask your stylist to keep a little contrast between your hair and your brows so your features do not get swallowed.
How do I stop copper fading into brassy orange?
Red and copper molecules are the largest and the most prone to washing out, so the real strategy is slowing the fade rather than correcting it later. Wash less frequently, keep the water cool, use a colour-depositing conditioner in a matching copper tone every second or third wash, and book a gloss top-up roughly every six to eight weeks so the tone is refreshed before it collapses into brass.
If you are starting from a heavily lightened base, or you have had colour go wrong before, take photographs to your consultation — both what you want and what you did not want last time. A picture of a result you disliked tells a colourist more in ten seconds than a paragraph of adjectives.
