Women & Men, eSalon is Here for You, Advanced Box Hair Color With Expert Colorists on Staff & on Call, (866) 550-2424 Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm PT or Saturday, 9am-5pm PT if your matter is urgent

By Laura Medina

https://www.esalon.com/

This portion of this article is a re-post from a previous article, Summer Hair Issue 2018: SERO-Vital, eSalon then Bumble + Bumble. https://luxurist.blogspot.com/2018/07/summer-hair-issue-2018-sero-vital.html

today's current update on dealing with CORVID-19 updates and how to self-dye at-home, with guided expert advice, over phone and mail-in step-instruction list.

In response to DIY hair-coloring during the age of quarantine, don't worry.  The expert hair colorists are at fully staffed, either at eSalon headquarters, https://www.esalon.com/ or at home, ready to answer and guide you through each and every step of self-coloring...

We're open and shipping your custom color as always. Our colorists are working remotely and are available to chat one-on-one, to give you the support you need to color at home. 

It's simple! First, you create a profile and tell them all about your hair history and ultimate color goal—add a pic of your current look to go the extra mile. Second, a personal colorist crafts your color factoring in everything from your features to your hair type. Last, your Color Set will ship to your door along with step-by-step personalized instructions and everything you need to color at home.

They’re a full-service custom hair color brand, which means they create your individual hair color formula from scratch right here in our HQ. It’s eSalon hair color made for you and only you.

Their extensive team of professional, licensed colorists hail from critically-acclaimed salons and beauty institutes. They individually review your profile, craft your color, and are available to call when you need extra guidance. Plus, they don't just say goodbye after your color ships. They stick by your side throughout your color journey— checking in, offering guidance, and making sure you're tickled (insert color here).

Need to speak to them directly? Give us a call at (866) 550-2424 Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm PT or Sat, 9am-5pm PT

Every eSalon hair color order includes Personalized Instructions unique to your custom color. They include a detailed explanation of how to apply your color at home and are selected specifically by your colorist to achieve your current color goal. That means they may change from order to order, so it's super important to read them carefully before applying your color. Common missteps such as leaving the color on longer than instructed or washing the color out before it has fully processed can result in a look you might not have been going for. So read 'em, read 'em, read 'em—every time you color.

At their headquarters/factory/salon in El Segundo, directly below LAX, the hairstylist staff go over your wants and desire over a questions and answer while checking out your hair texture and health.

From there, they download your hair color preference into the on-site hair dye lab, dispensing your own personalized hair dye with your hair dye recipe, store on a barcode with your own name.

eSalon is Coded in color.

Their engineers and coders turned color into a language. Shade variations and pigments become characters and symbols that are sent to our on-demand color dispenser. Because to mass-make custom color, we had to make a custom machine. It individually fills each bottle with exact drops of pigments and has created over 165,000 unique combinations so far. See how our technology works » …

Hair color is part art and part science. Their technology gives us them the ability to bring the two together in a way never seen before. Some call it the future of hair color, we call it Polly Chrome.

Reimagining color.

So this technology we speak of—how do they do it? They wish we could say it’s simple, but it actually took years of research, expert development, and fine-tuning. Like most hair color companies, they start with the basics, aka the color wheel. It informs how they use “harmonious color schemes,” “pure color,” and things like shade, tone, and tint to lay down the groundwork for their color formula. But they're not the kind of company that settles for “what’s always worked.” They wanted to make it even better, so they took a step into the future by customizing each hair color bottle we create. And that’s where the science and technology comes in.

To pull this off, they built two totally unique components that together disrupt the whole hair color industry. First, they created dual patented software that enables us to create unique color formula IDs. Then something else comes into play. The star of the show. The tour de force. Our do-it-all, label-making, color-dispensing, bottle-capping, watch-out-world machine—Polly Chrome. 

Their hairstylists are color editors...

You know the drill: you tell them about your hair history and color goal, then they run with it to craft your custom shade. They do it by using or Color Editor, which is able to tweak your color with a level of customization unseen in the industry. Think of it this way, your colorist is the artist and the Color Editor is their paint brush. But instead of hand-mixing dye and eyeballing tones, their colorists are trained to create color virtually. How?  Their engineers and coders turned color into a language. Shade variations and pigments become characters and symbols that makeup your color formula ID. 

In person at their salon locations, of course, it's easy for the stylists to personally analyze your hair for the right formula.

But, don't you know that eSalon first came out as a online and phone at-home hair dye company?

Take a photo, email it to customer care then...

Using the Color Editor, your colorist references your photo and the info in your Color Profile to determine your base color. Then, they can formulate less that ¼ shade difference in things like “tone,”“warmth,” or “vibrancy,” all while factoring in your hair history and grays. It’s how they meet your exact specifications, to make your color completely unique to you.

Each major hair color, tone, and shade are stored in their own individual vat while the enhancers of blue and yellow are stored in smaller vats, not different from crafting beer brews and wine.

Polly Chrome vats and bar code dispenser.

So how does your custom color go from numbers to, well, hair color? Here’s where it gets really good. They built a mixing machine named Polly Chrome, which means “many colors.” Polly speaks their language. It does communicate with their Color Editor by taking your formula ID and putting it into action. Here’s how it works: First, your personal colorist creates your formula ID using our Color Editor then hits “send.” It passes over to Polly, who prints that formula ID, your name, and the date on a label. That label gets placed onto an empty color bottle and travels down a conveyer belt to the dispenser. A little scanner reads your label and triggers the precise amount of varied pigments and toner to be dispensed into your bottle, down to a single drop. In fact, Polly is capable of dispensing over 2.2 octooctogintillion pigment variations (yup, that's a real number), all drawing from vats of color that have been custom formulated by our experts right here, on site. Each pigment dispensed is actually measured by weight (instead of volume like most places) on a high-grade medical scale (because we’re fancy). Then, your bottle is capped, packaged, and sent to its home—or apartment, or office, or wherever your hair desires.

A different kind of machine. 

Polly may move each bottle effortlessly and with ease, but it’s actually a very complex machine. To create it, we had to push the boundaries of manufacturing. Most industrial machines are made to produce just a few colors in high volumes. That’s why most color companies offer a range of 15-30 premade, premixed shades. But Polly is faced with the challenge of making each bottle from scratch, every single time, almost like a printer. Prior to Polly, they couldn’t find machinery that could pull something that bold off, so they designed the machine ourselves from the bottom up. From the labeler, to the bottle capper, to the pipes that distribute exact amounts of color, they mean it when we say there’s nothing else like Polly Chrome.

Salon brings the salon dye job to your own home or bathroom.

Don't worry about being confused, your own kit comes with an illustrated instruction list, showing you how to section your hair and how to apply. Your kit comes with your own sticker to stick your instruction list onto your mirror.

Based on your personalized preference, it even lists how long you allow the dye to settle in.

Most important step, is after sectioning off your hair, you need to smear stain guard lotion all along your hair line to stop the dye from bleeding into your eyes.

You pour then mix your own dye formula into the developer squeeze bottle than squirt along the roots and strands.

After your own customized minutes for dye to settle in, wash it out with their Classic Shampoo and Conditioner...

If you're lucky enough to get your hair dye at their headquarters' salon, you can get your hair washed in their massage chairs.