As a child I was fascinated by how different everyone looked and I was particularly interesting in one of my Hockey team mates who had heterochromia iridum; heter (different) chromia (colour) iridum (iris), yes two different eye colours, I thought she was the most exotic person in my world. Later I learned that all of our unique colourings come from the same substance Melanin. We all have it and in the case of our hair’s natural colour it is a mix and concentration of these tiny hard rice shaped substances, that create the variety in our colours. Melanin is also found around our bodies from our skin and eyes to our brain, with research continuing to understand its properties beyond colour. When it comes to hair, we are still learning about melanin too, this is really small science, I mean really, really, tiny and we are still discovering. In this blog I share my understanding of the hair’s tiny melanin which I greatly hope in years to come years is superseded and I get to write about that too.
Our hair colour is genetic and there are many different DNA variations across many different genes that could be used to predict hair colour. Suffice to say you will inherit much of your parents’ hair traits and also a few throwbacks to earlier generations.
The hair itself is colourless, it is only with melanin that we can see colour in our hair. The melanosome synthesise is deep within our skin at the root of the hair in areas called melanocytes. These melanocytes produce two different types of pigment Eumelanin black-brown and Pheomelanin reddish-brown/reddish-yellow that are made up of the same substance converted from the amino acid tyrosine and they come in a variety of sizes (large and small granules) as well as colours.
Pheomelanin is responsible for orange and red in hair. Eumelanin, which has two further types of black or brown, determines the darkness of the hair colour. More black eumelanin leads to blacker hair, and more brown eumelanin to browner hair. All of us have some amount of both Eumelanin & Pheomelanin. If you have ever lightened your own or another’s’ hair with a bleach or high lift colour you can see some of the charachterists of both; the phases of lightening as the melanins transitions from their original colours through tones of red, orange, yellow and pale yellow. The type, combination and concentration of our melanin will determine the speed, difficultly and eventual success of the finished result.
Brown hair
Brown hair is the second most common human hair colour, after black. Brown hair has higher levels of eumelanin and lower levels of pheomelanin. Of the two types of eumelanin (black and brown), brown-haired people will have brown eumelanin; they can also have medium-thick strands of hair and we often refer to them as brunette. A version of this brunette is Chestnut a more reddish shade of brown hair that has a slighter higher concentration of pheomelanin which is common with native people of Northern, Central, Western, and Eastern Europe.
Blonde hair
Blonde (or blond for men) hair ranges from nearly white or platinum blonde, to a dark golden blonde. Strawberry blonde, a mixture of blonde and red hair, is a very rare type containing the most pheomelanin. Blonde hair can have almost any combination of pheomelanin and eumelanin, but has only small amounts of both, the concentration is very low. Having more pheomelanin creates a more golden or strawberry blonde colour, and more eumelanin creates an ash or sandy blonde colour. Blonde hair is most commonly found in Northern and Western Europeans.
Black hair
Black hair is the darkest hair colour and the most common. It has large amounts of eumelanin and is more densely packed with melanin than any other hair colour. Occasionally this hair colour can have melanin appearing in the cuticles, medulla as well as the cortex. The black eumelanin size itself is also larger than the brown Eumelanin with individuals having an Asian ancestry with the largest individually sized eumelanin than an any other black melanin type. It might seem like an obvious statement, that lightening this hair type is difficult, though not impossible, products will need time to not only work on the size and colour of the Eumelanin they also have a high concentration of melanins to get through too.
Red hair
Red hair ranges from light strawberry blonde shades to titian, copper, and completely red. Red hair has the highest amounts of pheomelanin, evenly spread throughout the cortex and very low levels of eumelanin. This is the least common hair colour in the world. It is mostly prominent in the British Isles & Ireland, with Scotland and Ireland having the highest proportion of redheads; 13% percent of the population has red hair and approximately 40% percent carry the recessive redhead gene. I love telling my red-headed pals that they are the rarest people on the planet.
When I worked in R&D I coined the phrase the Celtic Phenomena to hypothesis why a mousy brown/blonde hair turns very yellow or orange when lifting or bleaching. It was later discovered that this hair type (my hair type) has similar charachterists to red hair in that it is densely packed with both Eumelanin and Pheomelanin. The lightening challenges are coming from both the composition and concentration of melanin even through at the first appearance it might look quite unassuming.
Grey/white hair
Grey or white hair is not caused by a true grey or white pigment, it is as a result of a lack of melanin. The clear hairs appear as grey or white because of the way light is reflected from the hairs. The scientific term for hair that is turning grey/white is achromotrichia and the majority of us will experience some form of greying as we age. Click here for more insights on greying hair.
Nanomelanins
It is currently thought that Eumelanin and Pheomelanin are responsible for creating all hair colours, however there was a discovery of Nanomelanins. These are very, very small melanins which fill the hair fibre and attach themselves to the main melanins. It has been suggested that the greater the amount of these melanins the denser the hair is coloured, although not visible from looking at the hair. This theory may help to explain why there are big differences in lightening and in colour results from perceivably similar starting hair colours.
Chemistry & melanins
Melanins will lightened with any oxidative colour, the oxidising agent hydrogen peroxide (H202) is needed not only to create the colour but also to remove the influence of the hair’s natural colour otherwise the colours would result dark. The higher the H202 concentration the greater the lightening effect on the natural melanin. Every time H202 is applied to the same section of hair the melanin with lighten further. Imagine if you were to remove all of the artificial dyes stuff from coloured hair, (a dream capability of mine) the hair would look like a patchwork of different versions of red, orange and yellow. The more yellow the area the more often a colour has been applied to that specific area. Overlapping colours during application, combing or reapplying colours to the same areas can all lead eventually to these overly lightened patches impacting the longevity of but also the colour itself.
Natural UV light will degrade Pheomelanin more rapidly that Eumelanin which explains why darker hair is better at protecting itself from photo degradation. Whereas Eumelanin is more soluble than Pheomelanin which explains how during a bleaching/lightening process it is the black-brown melanins that are first to breakdown with what appears like a slowing down of the lightening process once the Pheomelanin is exposed. You need to give the chemistry time to work on removing these very robust melanins and occasional on very large and black melanins a second application of lighter is needed if bright clean colours are the goal.
Another consideration of the Eumelanin solubility is when working on black-brown hair types with Asian and African ancestry, the large, predominate Eumelanin, highly concentrated melanin will lighten even when you don’t want it too resulting a warm or even orange hue. You might like to try working with lower oxidation (the lightening engine), I have found by mixing my darker hair colours with a lower developer gives me better control, less lift and greater true to tone result that is less likely to turn warm on dark melanin.
Off tone, or as I recently heard it being called during a Wella colour course ‘melanin spill’. This is an uncommon reaction to bleach/lightener which tends to happen on black-brown melanin types, where during the lightening process the hair stops lifting and takes on a strong unnatural yellow appearance. It is caused by going too fast and hard on the melanin with a strong bleach/lightener mix. The unnatural yellow is a result of the melanin not cleanly being removed leaving a residue which cannot be further bleached/lightening out of the hair, although it does improve over time with washing. I should emphasis it is uncommon nowadays as modern developers and bleaches have been developed to include stabilisers as well as different persulfates all helping to effectively control the breaking down of the melanin. Do check out my other blogs on bleach the science , the art-form and oxidative hair colours for more insights.
Melanin variances
Albinism is a genetic that results in little or no melanin in human hair, eyes, and skin. The hair is often white or pale blond. It can be difficult to colour, similar to resistant white hair due to the lack of any melanin and caution is needed as the skin can be quite delicate. The few clients I have worked with I found demi-permanent and even semi-permanent colours work well.
Vitiligo is a patchy loss of hair and skin colour that may occur as the result of an auto-immune disease. I remember one particular client who loved her patch (and so did I) so much I would have to wrap it up to avoid any colour going onto it, she kept it up for all the years I coloured her hair even when she was almost completely white.
Malnutrition is also known to cause hair to become lighter, thinner, and more brittle. Dark hair may turn reddish or blondish due to the decreased production of melanin. The condition is reversible with proper nutrition. You may be surprised to read this paragraph but I was able to identify a young girl struggling with anorexia before her family did by the way her hair was changing. Help was brought in to work with her and today she is a wonderful all-round super woman with amazing hair a great body proportion.
Marie Antoinette syndrome is a proposed phenomenon in which someone suddenly turns white due to stress. It doesn’t happen overnight as some stories would suggest but rather the hair grows grey/white, once the stress is reduced some hairs can become coloured again.
I mentioned earlier that we are still learning about hair and recent studies have looked at creating an artificial melanin that could potentially colour hair in the future, you can read the article in Science Daily here. It looks very promising for both the Professional and consumer but like all new science it will take some time before it will be available but it could be one to watch.
Next time I look at hair texture.
Stay Safe
Caroline
