Care · 5 minute read
How often do I actually need a root touch up?
A real schedule rather than a rule. How fast roots show for grey coverage, all over colour, foils and balayage, and how to book the year in advance.
Hair grows about half an inch a month, so the honest answer is not a rule. It is a calendar, and it depends far more on the gap between your colour and your natural depth than on the colour itself.
Here is the schedule we actually book people on.
The sequence
The sequence is the whole problem
A root becomes visible when the contrast at the parting crosses a threshold your eye notices. Half an inch of matching regrowth is invisible. Half an inch of grey against dark brown is a stripe.
So the interval is set by contrast and by placement, not by how long the colour lasts.
- 01
Grey coverage on dark hair
Every 4 weeks. The highest contrast situation there is.
- 02
All over colour, close to natural
Every 6 to 8 weeks.
- 03
Full foil highlights
Every 8 to 12 weeks, with a gloss around week 6 if you want it bright.
- 04
Balayage and lived in blonde
Every 12 to 16 weeks, sometimes twice a year with a gloss between.
Potential solutions
What actually works.
Book the whole year at once
Pick the interval, put the dates in the diary and stop deciding every eight weeks. It is the single change that keeps colour looking effortless.
Add a gloss halfway
A twenty minute gloss between full appointments refreshes tone and shine for a fraction of the cost.
Move the parting or add a root shadow
Both buy you weeks by reducing the contrast at the line rather than the growth.
Switch placement, not frequency
If four weekly visits do not fit your life, a blended technique changes the maths permanently.
What to avoid
The things that make it worse.
- Root touch up kits between visits. They rarely match, they overlap onto the last application, and they build the dark band that becomes a correction.
- Stretching a grey coverage appointment to twelve weeks and then asking for it all to disappear in one sitting. It can be done, it just costs more.
- Pulling permanent colour through the lengths every single time out of habit. Refresh the ends with a gloss instead.
- Changing your interval based on a photograph. Photos are taken the day the colour was done.
How we recreate it
Step by step, in the salon.
- 01
Know your number
Ask your stylist what interval your specific colour is on, in weeks.
- 02
Book it forward
Two or three appointments booked ahead, same slot each time.
- 03
Put a gloss in the middle
Only where your interval is ten weeks or more.
- 04
Home care that holds tone
The right shampoo makes a real difference to how week seven looks.
- 05
Review twice a year
Seasons, sun and length change the maths.
Laila's pro tip
If you find yourself parting your hair differently to hide the line, you are two weeks past your interval. That is the honest signal, and it is more accurate than any calendar.
Laila Grigley, Creative Director
Book with the Creative Colour teamCommon questions
Straight answers.
- Can I just get my roots done?
- Yes. A new growth refresh is a real appointment, $70 to $115 by level, and it is the right booking most of the time.
- How fast does hair grow?
- About half an inch a month for most people, so an eight week gap means roughly an inch of regrowth at the parting.