by Jennifer Searle

Created on: November 20, 2008

Hair coloring at home can be either a scary process or an enjoyable one, depending on if you take the proper steps to ensure the hair coloring outcome is the one that you want. The following tips will help those new to at home hair coloring and those who wish to experiment with different directions in their at home hair coloring adventures.

The first thing you will want to do is make sure you have all the necessary equipment at home. You do not need to break the bank picking up expensive tools, but there are some essentials that you will need to buy, and others you may already have around the house.

* Two or three plastic bowls, these can be reusable or disposable.
* Two towels designated for hair coloring and a button down shirt with the collar cut off (a guy's old button down works well for this!)
* A shower cap.
* 4 plastic hair clips.
* A plastic small tooth comb, a rat-tail comb is the best.
* Hair color applicator brush (these are a flat hard bristled brush, usually found in the hair coloring isle-or at a salon store like Sally's Beauty Supplies.) A silicon basting brush (found in the kitchen dept. in Wal-Mart and Bed Bath and Beyond stores) will also work if you can not find an applicator brush.
* Vinyl or latex gloves to protect your hands (the ones that come in the coloring kits are usually poor quality and rip.)

Now that you have your supplies, you will need to decide what color you want your hair. It is perfectly safe and easy to do drastic changes at home, though it is not recommended to do drastic changes before any important events. If you wish to do something drastic, realize that if something goes wrong, you need sometimes up to a week between treatments.

To just enhance without changing the color too drastically, go for colors within two to three shades of your nature hair. For the natural look, pick a shade that is one shade darker than your natural hair, a shade that is one shade lighter and a shade that it two or three shades lighter.

For natural application follow these tips:

*If using box hair coloring products, be careful using applicator tipped bottles, as they can make a mess. I recommend emptying developer bottles and color into plastic bowls and applying with an applicator brush one section of hair at a time. This controls how much color mixture is applied to the hair and limits amount of scalp exposure.

*Make three section parts in your hair. The bottom section part begins at the top of the ears and goes across from one ear to the other. The

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