Did you know hair is amazingly resilient and dynamic?
Human hair is composed of Keratin, a durable protein that helps give hair strength and resistance to stressors such as blow-drying, curling and weather.
Hair also goes through a regular Growth Cycle, so it's regularly rejuvenating itself. Each strand of hair goes through three different phases:
- Growth phase – Hair grows at a rate of half an inch each month, or 6 inches a year. Any individual hair strand can be in a growth phase for up to 6 years, and grow as long as 36 inches.
- Shedding phase – At a point when a hair strand no longer grows, it is shed. And shedding occurs quite regularly. In fact, you shed 50 to 100 strands every day!
- Resting phase – After hair is shed, the hair follicles rest before starting the growth cycle all over again, generating new hair strands.
Because a full head of hair contains up to 150,000 individual strands, you'll grow millions of new strands of hair within your lifetime, with your hair going though as many as 20 growth cycles.
What Gives Hair Its Color?
Natural haircolor comes from two types of pigment found within the hair: black/brown and red/gold. Everyone's hair from the lightest blonde to the darkest black, has some of each pigment type. However, it's the amount and proportion of pigment types that determines your natural haircolor and makes it unique.
How much of these color pigments you have within your hair is hereditary and changes over your lifetime. As you get older, hair strands lose pigments and new ones are not generated, causing hair to lose color and turn gray.
It's Easy to Change or Enhance Your Haircolor!
Each year, more than 50 million women of every age and ethnicity color their hair with all over color, highlights or lowlights. The most common type of haircolor is Level 3, also known as permanent haircolor, because it lasts until you color again.
A Level 3 haircolor kit contains a colorant and a developer. When these two are mixed together, each activates the other to form a haircoloring solution that you apply throughout your hair to change the color.
When you apply Level 3 haircoloring mixture to your hair, 2 things happen. First the natural pigment is lightened, and at the same time the new color is absorbed, creating the new color tone in your hair.
Leaving the mixture on your hair for a specified amount of time creates its beautiful, new haircolor shade. After you rinse the coloring mixture from your hair, you then condition your hair to lock in color, add shine and keep the texture soft.
Permanent haircolor is great for lightening or darkening your hair. Level 3 is also the only type of haircolor that provides 100% gray coverage (other levels of haircoloring only provide gray blending).
To keep your color looking vibrant and cover roots or gray growth, most people re-color their hair every four to eight weeks.
Learn more about Revlon's "just for roots" haircolor for complete root coverage in-between colorings. Click here.
Hair Quiz
Q: Which of the three phases of the hair growth cycle do hair strands spend the most time in: growing, resting or shedding?
A: Growing! This phase can last for up to six years for an individual strand of hair.
Q: How long can a single strand of hair grow before it's shed?
A: Three feet.
Q: What's the best way to get 100% gray coverage?
A: Use a permanent/Level 3 haircolor. Select the Revlon haircolor that's right for you.
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