My mentor in Charlotte told me to always mix my own toner from scratch instead of buying pre-made, and after a year of stubbornly ignoring her, I finally tried it on a client's level 6 brass and the control was unreal.

Has anyone else made the switch from pre-mixed to custom toner blends, and what's your go-to formula for stubborn orange tones?

4 comments

4 Comments

rileymartinez1mo ago

I mean, of course it took you a year to listen, we've all been there. It's like when someone tells you to actually read the recipe instead of just winging it and you're stubborn until you finally do and your cake doesn't collapse. That pre-made stuff is basically a guessing game with someone else's formula. Mixing your own is just you fixing the exact problem in front of you, not some average brass they imagined.

owens.blair1mo ago

Tell me about it, I fought my own stubborn streak for months before I gave in. You hit the nail on the head with the recipe thing, it's that exact same feeling of pride making you ignore the obvious fix. Using a pre-made toner felt like trying to solve a math problem with someone else's wrong answer. Once I started mixing, it finally clicked that I was fixing my hair, not some random sample they tested on. The control is just completely different when you can adjust it drop by drop.

cole_murphy13d ago

The cost difference is the angle nobody's talking about. I did the math once and a bottle of pre mixed toner runs like $15-20 for maybe 4 uses if you're lucky. Custom mixing with a tube of violet and some clear base costs me maybe $3 per application and I get exactly what I need. Even if you mess up a batch and have to dump it, you're still ahead financially. Plus you're not stuck with a whole bottle of something that only works on one specific level of brass. That pre mixed stuff expires on your shelf while your custom mix changes with every client.

troychen1mo ago

So you finally listened to your mentor, huh? I read a long forum thread about this exact thing, where people were swearing that mixing their own toner was a total game changer for control. The basic idea I kept seeing was to use a true violet based toner, not a blue-violet, to really cancel out that orange. Something like a dash of a deep violet mixed into a neutral base seems to be the popular fix for level 6 brass. It makes sense when you think about it, because you can tweak it until it's just right instead of hoping a pre-made bottle guesses correctly.