Looking for more shiny, smooth, healthy results from your hair color?

Whether your doing red, blond, brunette, foil highlights, or balayage, it’s exciting to have a new product to work with. David Frank Salon features Wella’s newest color line, Illumina, to their line up of color products.  The results are amazing. Super shiny, beautiful tone, and the feels fantastic.

Illumina Color From Wella

Created to complement Wella’s current hair color offerings, ILLUMINA’s range of 31 shades was five years in the making, has been tested by thousands of stylists worldwide, may be used with any developer, and introduces MICROLIGHT technology, whereby “micro-particles encapsulate the metals left on hair to protect the cuticle and maintain clarity.”

Wella Professionals’ Global Creative Director Josh Wood says, “We really wanted to create a product which gave the hair a lightness – like the effect you only get at one place in the world – Los Angeles. There’s a reason Hollywood is based in LA …the light there is so beautiful, it illuminates everybody as though they were in a movie – just breathtakingly beautiful and like nothing else in the world. This is the hair color result we get with ILLUMINA Color. ”

ILLUMINA Color is a range of sheer, natural-looking colors which give your hair incredible luminosity from within, in every kind of light. It has up to 100% grey coverage with a sheer result that does not compromise on hair health. Wood explains:

“The outer layer of the hair, the cuticle, is transparent like fingernails, so the condition of the hair cuticle it is extremely important because it allows light to pass through and reflect the real color tones of the hair from within. However impurities, like tiny metals, are left as a residue from water as you wash your hair and can stick to the cuticles, which can then can form free radicals and cause damage to the cuticle surface during the coloring process.”

“In essence, this means that the hair cuticle is no longer transparent so when light interacts with the hair it gets diffused and it is unable to enter the hair or reflect the color with the same intensity – translating into less luminosity color after color.”

“ILLUMINA Color contains breakthrough MICROLIGHT™ technology with millions of micro-particles that encapsulate the tiny metals left on the hair, reducing cuticle damage and keeping the surface of the hair cuticle healthier and more transparent. In fact,ILLUMINA Color boasts an incredible light reflection as well as up to 100% grey coverage with a sheer color result*.”

Dr. Bernhard Fink, head of a research group funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG), has run a set of Perception Studies to analyze the impact of hair cuticle damage on visual perception and attractiveness. The results prove that hair luminosity is crucial in predicting age, health and attractiveness perception.

Dr Fink says, “The eye-tracking data clearly shows that undamaged coloured and damaged natural hair receive high visual attention. However, only undamaged colored hair gives you the kind of ‘positive attention’ you want, as it is judged most positively in terms of age, health and attractiveness.”

Sheer &Luminous or Rich & Deep – which girl are you?

Just as with cosmetics, girls who color their hair can largely be divided into two groups. There are those who go for a saturated, full-on color approach with red lips, strong foundation, block hair color and a very ‘done’ result. While others prefer a more natural, sheer result achieved through tinted moisturizer, colored gloss and a subtle hair look.  In other words, think Dita von Teese vs. Gisele Bundchen.  If a glossy glow is the look you rock, then ILLUMINA Color is for you.  Its result is a shimmering sheerness which gives a look that is beyond natural.

Illumina is a premium color product, not all salons will carry it. I’ve been working with it for about a year now, and I wouldn’t want to be without it. In our area, hard water is a real challenge, and Illumina can be a big help if your having challenges.  The hair is noticeably more smooth and shiny.  The color choices aren’t as varied as the Koleston line, but last month Wella released 11 more color choices, making the illumina color range a bit easier to suit to anyone.