by Paola Fanutti

Created on: August 25, 2009

Far from its tacky glittery spray cousin of the 80's, modern coloured hair spray offers a temporay and fast way to add natural looking highlghts for a few hours or a day. Colour hair spray has a variety of uses and can be used to temporarily touch up roots, add a funky, punky or eccentric temporary hair colour for a costume or special event, or can accentuate existing colour and create a highlighted effect. You can also use a colour spray to spike and tint the ends, cover greys, create a chunky or streaky effect on uniform hair colour or try out a shade before making the commitment of putting permanent tint on your head.

The hairspray sprays a fine mist of colour or glitter on the surface of the strands and the peroxide and bleach free temporary, no-fuss colour washes out at your next shampoo. Applying temporary spray can be a bit messy, though, if you're not careful. Here's how to do it:

Start with washed and dried hair. Style the hair as you wish. Wear a clean towel and hold the bottle about 12 to 18 inches from the strands you want to coat. Isolate the hair you want to colour and shake the tin well and spray hair. Hold the can further away if you want to coat the entire head. It can be easy to overdo colour, so don't over spray. Try to apply in very short bursts; it's always easier to add more product than to remove it later. Have a friend spray hard to reach areas.

To create streaky effect, take an old, but tight fitting plastic shower cap and poke small holes into it, where you want to colour your head. Section out your hair into the holes, piece by piece and spray each chunk separately. After colour dries, touch up the top roots or any other areas you might have missed. The formula should dry smooth, not sticky. When you're ready to go back to your original look, shampoo out the dye with warm water.

Because the formulas are peroxide-free, keep in mind that applying darker shades on your natural hair colour will likely work much better than applying lighter shades on darker hair. In other words, it's much easier to go brunette from blonde than vice versa. Very thick and long hair also tends to be difficult to coat.

Some good hair colour spray dyes to try? Forget the cheap seasonal brands in your Halloween aisle in October, and turn to some inexpensive, yet highly rated versions.

Kyrolan Colour Spray comes in natural and funky shapes that works well on natural hair and on wigs.

Jerome Russell Natural Colour Highlights promises professional, commitment-free results and comes in a variety of authentic looking shades.

The BWild Colour Line by Jerome Russell offers more extravagent sounding colours, like Bengal Blue and Siberian White.

Stargazer Temporary Hair Colour Spray has a whole range of wild shades to try out.

Hight Light Spray offers eight, purse size tin colours to match your outfit, beau and attitude of the day.

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