Here's a little something that isn't widely talked about, or understood. No- not why men think it takes one hour and $50 to get your hair highlighted. It's the difference between brassy, warm, neutral, cool, icy cool and basically white tones of hair.
Warm tones(red, orange, copper, yellow, bronze, brass, etc.) reflect light and because of that, they appear brighter than their rival-the cool tones(ash, pearl, platinum, chocolate browns, etc.). Think-day vs. night. Black vs. white. Shat vs. shite. (sorry, but I couldn't help myself even though my professional voice is yelling DON'T TYPE THAT!!)
Let's say your are a dark brown and you want to be a medium/blonde. The underlying pigment in your hair is basically red and always will be. In order to lift your hair around 5-6 levels, to get you safely to a medium blonde, you have to use decolorizer(bleach). In lifting your hair color, your underlying pigment is being stripped out and that's why it goes through the red, red-orange, orange, orange-yellow, yellow, bright yellow phases.
So let's say you are a 3(dark brown) and you want to be an 8(medium blonde), that means you'll be lifted to an orange/yellowish color, which is not what you want. An 8 reflects light better than a 3. In order to make sure you see no warmth, your hair must be toned with a special toner most likely consisting of blue, green, dark violet and maybe some steel undertones. Those colors don't reflect light as well, resulting in darker results. So, while you may enjoy the brightness of an orange 8, you don't want the orange(we understand). After the toner is applied, your orange 8 will most likely appear like a non-orange caramel 6.5-8.......which is beautiful but is not as bright.
So make sure when you are prepared to "ash out the red" as a lot of the old school women like to say, that you are prepared to see a darker, cooler tone. In order to get brighter blondes, you must lift heavily and if you have hair that's black-dark brown, you really need 2-3 sessions(6 weeks-a year) in bleaching, unless you want your hair to fall out.
This is why it's important to understand what the most realistic results are going to be. It takes time, science, patience, experience, money, knowledge and lots of tlc to the hair in order to get the results that you want. And it definitely doesn't take an hour and $50 like your husband wishes it would.
