by Jenni Girouard

Created on: May 22, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2010

How often should I color my hair? This is a very popular question. I have been a cosmetologist for over ten years, and the answer is simple. It really depends on you! There are a lot of factors that you need to look at in determining the proper wait time for recoloring the roots of your hair. First of all, you need to know how fast or slow your hair grows. This varies from person to person and from season to season. Second, you want to find out if you hair is fine or coarse, and if it is thick or thin. Last, the retouching of color will be determine on which hair coloring service you have had done to your hair.

Let's explore each of these factors individually. The first question you need to ask yourself is "How fast does my hair grow?" The average growth of a person's hair is about one half inch every four to six weeks. Remember, this is just an average. My hair personally grows one half inch every three weeks, so I would need to color my hair faster than the national average says to. The reason this is important to know is because your scalp has a natural heat zone. This zone only extends out about one half inch to one inch from your scalp into your hair. If you are applying a retouch to an all over color, and your regrowth is more than one inch, the color closest to you scalp will process at a much faster rate than the color further away from your scalp. This can cause a very unsightly band around your head. This band is usually a brassy golden color.

The second question you need to ask yourself is "What type of hair do I have?" Is it thick or thin? Is it fine or coarse? This all goes back to the heat zone located around your scalp. If your hair is fine in diameter you will be able to wait a little longer to color your hair. This is because the heat zone will penetrate out a little further from the scalp, into your hair. To find out what the diameter of your hair is, pull out one hair and look at it. Is it almost see through? If you answered yes, it's considered fine. Does it look like it is so thick that you could sew with it? This would be considered coarse. Also, if the hair is thin (this is determined by the amount of hairs on your head per square inch), you can let your color go a little longer because the heat zone will be able to penetrate out from the scalp further. Thick coarse hair need to be done much sooner because of it's size and density. This type of hair will get in the way of the scalp's natural heat zone.

The last question you will need to ask yourself is "What type of hair coloring service do I have?" If you have an all over color you will need to color your roots with no more than one half of an inch to one inch of regrowth. If your regrowth expand past this mark, you will receive the brassy band I wrote about. On the other hand, if your hair is colored using a foiling technique (highlights), you can usually wait until your roots have grown out around two inches. This is because the foils get in the way of the heat zone, so you are usually put under the hair dryer anyway. Foiled hair usually processes at the same rate all of the way down the hair shaft. (This is not always the case. When hair has been multiply colored it will process at different rates. Always refer these situations to a professional hair stylist.)

Having said all of this, my personal recommendation is to mark down the day you received your hair coloring service on a calender. Each week re-examine these three questions, and you will always be able to answer the question "How often should I color my hair?" Happy hair coloring!

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