Capitol Hill's Premier Haircuts & Color

Emerson Salon is the best hair salon on Capitol Hill, Seattle. Our experienced hair stylists and colorists have been fusing the latest trends with top hair techniques for years. Whether you’re looking to transform your look in Seattle with a new haircut and color or just maintain your already hip style, we are here and ready to help.

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909 E Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122
T: 206-323-7437
@: emersonsalon@gmail.com

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Articles from ‘Corrective Color’

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Transitioning Your Hair to Fall

Balayage is an excellent option for transitioning your damaged blond to a light caramel brown fall hue. It’s all in the application & conditioning process mastered by your color professionals at Emerson. Give your ends a splash of gold & deep conditioning while fanning a warm brown through the routes as Gisele Bundchan has done for years, to create a crescendo of color that looks natural & rich. Top off your new color with some free flowing waves or smooth & sleek long layers. Our Caviar system is ideal for treating dry, sun-kissed locks post color.




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Emerson Salon 909 E Pike St Seattle (Haircuts & Color)
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TagsAlterna Products, Balayage, Celebrity Hairstyles, Corrective Color, Emily Waddell, Hair Care, Hair Color, Hair Pictures

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Blonde Hair Color Questions

“Is it true blonds can’t color their hair or it will turn green?”

Whether you are a natural blond, have blond foils, or are all over blond, you must seek professional hair coloring care in order to correctly alter a blond to a darker color. If you are only deepening the hair by 1-3 levels, the process is quite simple as a hairstylist will choose a hue that will offset the porosity, warmth/coolness and lightness of the hair. If you are choosing to go significantly darker (permanently) it is called, color correction.

Each salon has its own pricing for color correction and it might seem pricey but if you skip steps you might compromise the integrity of your hair and its color. Trying to correct you hair at home could cause more mistakes in the color and end up being twice as expensive to get fixed. The perfect level of warmth must be chosen first to gradually bring the color down without turning it green. This is called repigmentization. Sometimes this must be done twice if the hair is over processed and porous. Then another final tint is applied and the color is permanent. Your stylist will recommend the proper products for your hair type. If you hair is overly porous the color might fade a level within a month because of the damage on the hair. If this happens, book a demipermanent color to refresh the hue after 6-8weeks.

“Can brown hair go blond without bleach?”

This depends on how dark the natural brown is and the desired hue of blond. If you are a medium brown naturally, yes, it is possible to get to a light to medium blond.

Remember: Tint does not lift tint. This means if your hair is colored brown it is not possible to go blond without bleach.

A haircare professional will be able to consult with you to determine what process is appropriate and whether the health of you hair can stand it. Each hair case is different and haircoloring can be a complex chemical process, so utilize your stylists knowledge in order to get to your end goal.


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TagsBlonde Hair, Corrective Color, D'Arcy Harrison, FAQ, Hair Color

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

I have straightened and colored hair and am getting hair breakage. What should I do?

If you are coloring and straightening your own hair at home and it is breaking, stop!

  • The home coloring and straightening kits on the market use very harsh chemicals, unlike professional-grade hair colors and straighteners.
  • Both hair color and straighteners chemically alter the composition of hair. They both change the bonds that hair is made up of.

Here is an example of straightened, color treated hair—>

Coarser hair textures can take a bit more chemical alteration because the strands of the hairs themselves are stronger.



<----Here is an example of broken colored and straightened hair

If your hair is breaking from having two chemical processes on your hair, and is not breaking because you are putting it into a ponytail or wearing clips in it, then there are some things you can do!

Make an appointment with a hair professional for a consultation.

A good hair professional will recommend a salon reconditioning treatment first off, to restore some of your hair’s elasticity, moisture and protein balance, and overall hair health.

  • It is advisable to pick one process over another in the event that your hair cannot handle two chemical processes. Which is more important? Covering gray or having a funky color? Or taming unruly curls?
  • There are alternate methods to wearing one’s hair straighter that don’t involve a chemical process, Yes, they take more time but we all have choices to make regarding our health.
  • Straight, sleek gray hair or natural hair can look great when taken care of, and colorful curly hair that is shiny and tamed looks amazing as well!
  • If you have tried everything and are committed to having straight and color treated hair, then wait at least two weeks between coloring and straightening your hair. After a week has passed after the first service, get a conditioning treatment done in the salon, to help strengthen and prepare your hair for the next chemical service.

Here is an example of hair colored and straightened in a salon—>

In the salon, we have more resources available, color-wise, that will not damage your hair. Depending on your desired color result and the strength of the straightener used on your hair (we can usually tell from looking at your natural color and assessing your hair’s level of porosity), we will customize a hair color formulation for you that will be less damaging to your hair.

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TagsCorrective Color, Hair Care, Hair Color, Health, Lancer Forney

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Color Issue Troubleshooting


Sometimes, there are factors that contribute to a shorter/longer shelf life for your custom designed color after you leave the salon. Here are some effects, causes and possible solutions.

  • Fadeage: Color will always fade over time but the more you take care of your hair, the longer it will last. If your hair is porous, you use heating implements and if you don’t use the professional products designed for colored hair and recommended for your hair type. (Example: Leave In Luxury by Kevin Murphy or Rapid Repair Spray by Alterna.) Always use a color safe barrier protectant before using high heat and make sure to schedule regular trims to rid your hair of split or porous ends that don’t hold color well.

  • An odd greenish tinge to highlights: This could be for a number of reasons: You swim a lot in chlorinated pools. This can be remedied by wearing a swim cap on top of predampened hair with a light conditioner in it. This acts a barrier against the chlorinated water that can react over time to create the greenish hue. The other reason is you recently had your color done and the toner used on you hair over deposited on your porous ends. If your stylist doesn’t remedy this in the salon you can use this home remedy. Saturate your hair with hot water, shampoo once and then add cheap dish washing liquid (like palmolive or Dawn) to the area that is unsatisfactory. Leave this in with a towel around your head for 10-30 minutes. Rinse and condition. If you suspect your tap water to be an isssue (Minerals, chlorine,etc) you can use distilled or filtered water to rinse your hair when shampooing and conditioning. If any of these solutions doesn’t work, call your stylist.

  • Flat, dull, dry hair: You can either start using a deep conditioner 1-2X a week for 20 minutes (like Alterna’s Caviar Hair Masque or Kevin Murphy’s Born Again), schedule a warm or clear demipermanent or permanent gloss with your stylist, or you can use a shine spray daily (like Rapid Repair Spray).

  • Inconsistent color: This could be caused by fadeage on color corrected or bleach and tone hair. In this case, the hair has been compromised by inequal porosity in the hair. Schedule an all over color with your stylist as damaged hair’s color life is determined only by it’s condition. Most likely, you have been warned of this possible factor and know already that you must have continued commitment and investment in your color in order to reach your color goal. Use only the products recommended to you and make sure to always use a light leave-in conditioner (Staying Alive by Kevin Murphy) to help keep in the color that did deposit well. If you don’t have these hair condition factors, call your stylist for a recommendation.

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TagsAsk A Stylist, Corrective Color, D'Arcy Harrison, FAQ, Fudge Hair Products, Hair Color

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Hair Color Correction

This week I have been busy with corrective coloring.

There are two reasons why a color service is deemed “corrective”:

1) A hairstylist formulated and/or consulted with a client wrongly.

2) A client has been coloring his/her hair at home for awhile and has led to a problem.

When a stylist has made an error, the best thing to do is to have that stylist fix the problem if possible. This isn’t always possible, and so we end up correcting other stylists’ work. Each salon uses their own color system. Color systems are not alike. There are some similarities and luckily, experienced stylists can almost always remedy these errors easily. OTC hair color is too variable and the chemical makeup of OTC hair color is inferior to professional salon color. OTC hair color is already formulated in a bottle, and it comes with a standard developer. Most clients’ hair is not standard, and multiple issues arise. Here, I will explain why hair ends up too dark!

Hair Darkening:

  • Over time, the home colorist colors the entire lengths of his/her locks, resulting in an overabundance of color pigment deposit and an end result of the ever-common “Too Dark Ends”.
  • This effect is further aggravated with the presence of any amount of gray hair on the head, because gray hair requires a different chemical formulation than non-gray hair does.
  • When harsh chemicals (usually found in OTC hair color products) are layered onto hair strands continually, the hair’s integrity, elasticity, and porosity are severely compromised.

What we do:

  • Here at the salon, when we color a client’s hair darker, we don’t color the entire length every time. We do a “Retouch”, once our client’s hair is the color they love. Depending on the home hair care program utilized, the ends may or may not fade.
  • We use and recommend our tested color-safe products in the salon to maintain our client’s hair color in between appointments. This ensures optimum color longevity! Some darker colors, like reds, will fade a little even then, so we do what is called a “Refresher” service to the ends of the hair. This is not the same thing as depositing permanent color to the hair that has already been colored, because that leads to damage over time and too-dark ends.

What can you do if you have this problem:

  • Make an appointment with your hair professional. We can remove the pigment safely and the chemicals we use for color correction in the salon are safe and will not damage your hair further.
  • It usually takes two or three appointments to get your hair into completely stellar shape. Your hair may need a further application, depending on how the OTC color lifts out of your hair, or it may need reconditioning to even out your hair’s uneven porosity that results from over-processed hair lengths.

Here is what normal and damaged hair strands look like when magnified:

If you attempted to color your hair at home using box color and the result was not what you were expecting…don’t panic. Make an appointment today and we’ll fix your hair problem.

-posted by Lancer

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Emerson Salon 909 E Pike St Seattle (Haircuts & Color)
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TagsCorrective Color, Deep Conditioning, Hair Consultation, Hair Science, Lancer Forney

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Why you shouldn’t color your own hair

Have you colored your own hair in order to try to save yourself some money? Have you had your hair colored by your best friend and it didn’t turn out anything like you wanted? As a matter of fact it looked absolutely ugly? So you took yourself to a salon and you sat down in the styling chair for a consultation with the stylist and you were instantly the victim of “sticker shock?”

During the consultation your stylist probably let you know that in order to correct your hair catastrophe it was going to take a considerable amount of time and color expertise, not to mention money, to get your hair to a better color and condition. Often times, depending on on how extremely damaged your hair may be, it may take more than one visit to your stylist in order to get your hair to the place you intended it to be.

Color Corrective services can be expensive. That self-color you tried to save some money with is now going to cost you exponentially more dough than it would have cost to have had your hair professionally colored. Don’t feel alone. I can’t tell you how many corrective colors I have done in years past. The lure of cheap box color overwhelms many a bargain hunter. There are so many things that the directions on those nare-do-well box colors are never quite specific about. Nor do they tell you that most box colors are only designed to lift your hair only a little. They also don’t tell you that that ultimate platinum blonde box color won’t quite lift your dark brown hair to a buxom blonde. They also don’t tell you that putting that sassy red box color on blonde hair may just turn your hair pink or another atrocious shade. Box color companies prey on your willingness to believe that the color in the box is miraculously going to make your locks look beautiful. When in fact you just might turn out with bright orange roots and burnt orange brown ends.

Cosmetologists are trained in the art and science of color and color correction. Removing over-the-counter box color can be a challenging process, entailing hours of color removal, re-pigmentation and then re-coloring to your desired tint. Many box colors use mineral dyes rather that vegetable dyes, causing each of these processes takes a considerable amount of time and expertise. I once did a color rescue on a client who used an OTC box color that took me nearly 6 hours, and $285.00 to correct. Trying to save money on color, cost her much more than she ever anticipated. Generally I charge $85 per hour for color corrective services. I will usually try to keep my clients costs down as much as possible. As you can tell 6 x 85 does not equal 285 rather $510. So consumer beware when you go to purchase your next over-the- counter box color, you just may be paying more than you bargained for.

For this reason alone you should be very wary when you decide to do your own color. It just may cost you much more money than you planned, or months of ugly hair while it grows out.

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Emerson Salon 909 E Pike St Seattle (Haircuts & Color)
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TagsCorrective Color, Rusty Jones