Is it better for my hair to be clean or dirty when I get my hair colored?

CLEAN! Coloring services used to be very harsh on the hair & long ago stylists would recommend coming with "dirty hair" saying your natural oils would help protect your hair from the coloring process. Today, we have confidence in the vast improvements that have been made to professional hair color & hair bleach. Manufactures, like Redken, recommend color/ lightening services be done on clean dry hair for the best results. Natural oils that we once thought "protected" the hair, we now know actually slow down the lightening process because the bleach or lightening agent needs break through the natural oils or product build up before it can achieve it's main task of lightening your hair. Thus results in more time in the salon waiting & thinking blonde thoughts to only being able to achieve highlights that are too warm. Grey coverage & glosses face a different challenge on dirty hair. Natural Oils or product build up can become a barrier not allowing the color molecules to develop in the hair strand. This barrier of natural oils can cause hair color to not take evenly or sometimes not at all!

As a friend, I would add, 1 day "dirty" hair is ok, yet more than 1 day dirty hair could result in an unexpected result. All in all, my best advace as your personal trained professional ... YES! SHAMPOO, RINSE & REPEAT! ...and then think blonde thoughts ;)