Bruising. To a doctor, it’s a minor hematoma of tissue. To celebrity hair stylist and educator Carla Ross, it’s the latest and greatest way to color your hair for fuller and more youthful-looking strands.
Carla’s invention, the “Bruising” technique was born to meet the demand of her clients, “I was constantly being asked, ‘Why does my hair look dry? Why does it look flat? Thin? I want hair like I had when I was a kid, playing outside in the sun.’”
The solution to her clients complaints came when she decided to throw traditional hair coloring techniques out the window and actually try something she was told never to do as a colorist: lay colors on top of colors with no foils. “[As a colorist] we are taught that color can never touch color—that’s called bleeding—if you have no control, you can create holes and hot spots in the hair.” But if you have a stylist that has control, decades of experience and knows what they are doing, like Carla, you can take contrasting and complementary colors of dye and turn them into an array of shades in the hair to achieve the natural color and highlights you had as a child.
“If you look at someone’s natural hair color, you’re going to see in the sun that there are tons of different colors. Blondes, for instance, have ashy sections and ginger tones. That’s the beauty of nature—everything is fully represented. With Bruising, you can recreate that. It’s not just one solid hair color [which isn’t natural]. Bruising places opposing colors, on top of each other, and turns four colors into 16.”
Other added bonuses of this technique, besides more natural-looking color, is that it can actually make your hair look thicker and fuller. “Some women with finer hair, can’t have highlights because it optically breaks up the hair to makes it look thinner, but with this technique, you can have dimension without it optically breaking up the hair. This gives the highs and lows with no demarked color.”
Interested in trying this hair color for yourself? Ask your trusted stylist, or visit Carla at the Slash Salon in Santa Monica, CA because it can quickly turn wrong in the hands of someone inexperienced.
