What the foils are telling me lately
I switched up my foiling pattern on fine, color-treated hair about four months ago and I’m still not totally sold on going back, even though two other stylists at my salon think I’m overcomplicating it.
Here’s what happened. I had a client with thin, shoulder-length hair who’d been getting traditional face-framing highlights for three years. Same placement every time. The color was fine, technically correct, did what it was supposed to do.
But it kept looking heavier at the root regrowth point than I wanted, and stretching it out actually slowed that down without changing the foil count or the formula. That’s it. No big revelation, just a placement shift that worked for her specific density.
I don’t do that on everyone. Thick hair doesn’t need it, and honestly on some textures it just reads as patchy instead of soft. But for the fine-hair clients who come in every ten to twelve weeks, it’s become close to a default for me now, and I’d rather explain that than pretend I have one universal foiling philosophy that applies across the board.
Where I land on the warm-versus-cool debate
I think a lot of stylists are too rigid about matching tone to skin undertone, and I’ll probably get pushback for saying that. The undertone matching rule is useful as a starting point. It is not the law.
I’ve put warm copper on someone with what most colorists would call a cool undertone and it looked better on her than anything “correct” would have, because her eye color and the rest of her coloring pulled it together in a way the undertone chart doesn’t account for.
That’s not a popular thing to say in a lot of color education spaces right now. People get attached to the rules because the rules are teachable and a face is not.
I still use undertone as information. I just don’t let it override what I’m actually looking at in front of me.
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