You’re giving the other hairdresser across the salon THE look. You’ve left the foil open just enough for them to casually walk past and check your lift  because there’s no way you’re saying “What do you think i should do” out loud with your client sitting right there. Two minutes later, you’re both hiding in the colour room trying to work out why her roots are yellow and her ends are
orange.

You had that gut feeling your client wasn’t happy. Two days later, the text comes. Now you’re using more colour, giving away more time and squeezing them into a space in your diary that doesn’t exist. Money is leaking out of your business with every redo  and you’re terrified one day it
won’t be a text… it’ll be a TikTok telling everyone about it.

Your bleach fear is real and it’s never left you since. That stretchy, cotton-wool-like hair… you can picture it going down the plughole. You never know how far you can safely take it so you rinse early and never quite get that bright blonde inspo pic your client walked in with.

You’re a repeat toner-crime offender at the backwash. The first one’s too warm, so you mix another with more ash. Still not right? Another bowl comes out because you want it greyer. Three toners later, your client’s still at the backwash asking, “Is everything looking okay?, “Yeah hun, it’s fine”… while looking down at her now-purple
hair.

Deep down, you don’t trust yourself. There’s a real client sitting in your chair, and trying a different toner feels like a gamble  because if it goes wrong, you don’t trust yourself to know how to fix it. So out comes your emotional support toner again… and when that still leaves too much warmth, out comes the blue shampoo, hoping it’ll save the day, knowing it’ll probably last about one wash.

I’m Laura, the face behind Science Behind Hairdressing, and I’ve spent years studying colour science and teaching hairdressers how to take colour science out of the textbook and apply it to the hair in
front of them.

But I’ve been that hairdresser too checking my bleach, relying on my safe toners and thinking that toning was the part of colour I needed to get better at.

The more I learnt about colour science, and the more hairdressers I taught, the more I realised that the toner wasn’t always the problem.

Your toner formulation starts long before you pick up your shade chart. It starts with how you lift the hair, the canvas you create and whether you can actually read what’s sitting in front of you.

And that’s exactly why I built the Lift, Read & Tone Method to teach the missing process between bleaching and toning that so many of us were never properly taught.

A brand-neutral method that teaches you to lift with a reason, read the canvas you actually have and use thatinformation to make your toning decisions - whatever colour brand is sitting in your colour
room.

Think about what not knowing this is already costing you.

Two redos a month means extra bowls of colour you’re paying for, hours in your diary you’re not being paid for and appointments you could have filled with paying clients.

Then there’s the client who doesn’t complain at all. She tells you she loves it, leaves the salon… and quietly books somewhere else next time. 

And what about the bigger blonding job you’d LOVE to take on, but you’re not confident you can get the result - so you play it safe, turn it down or keep your prices low because you don’t quite trust yourself to charge more yet?

This isn’t just costing you confidence behind the chair. It can be costing you clients, time and money every single month.

Lift, Read & Tone gives you the knowledge to change that - so you can take on the colour work you actually want, create results clients come back for and build a business where your colour knowledge is something you can confidently charge for.

You’re a good hairdresser - but your colour knowledge hasn’t quite caught up with the results you know you’re capable of creating.

You can bleach, you can tone and you know your colour wheel… but there are still too many moments behind the chair where you’re hoping rather than knowing.

You open your shade chart and feel completely overwhelmed by the options. So despite having a whole colour cupboard to choose from, you find yourself reaching for the same few toners because they’re the ones you feel safest using.

You’re fed up with redos eating into your time AND your money. Free colour, unpaid hours and clients squeezed into spaces that didn’t exist in your diary. You want to get it right the first time more often - and have clients who trust you
enough to keep coming back.

You want to take on bigger colour and blonding appointments without that little voice asking, “Can I actually pull this off?”

You want your knowledge to match the level of work you want to create and feel confident charging appropriately for it.

You’re ready to stop relying on someone else’s formula and start trusting your own decisions. You want to look at the hair in front of you, know what it needs and create colour results you know how to recreate  not ones you got
right by luck.

It’s time to bring Lift, Read & Tone together into one clear process - so you can make colour decisions you actually trust, create results you know how to recreate and turn more first-time clients into the ones who come back again and again.

Because when your colour becomes more predictable, your clients are more likely to return  and your income can become more predictable too.

The face behind Science Behind Hairdressing

I’m a hairdresser, colour educator and self-confessed colour science geek, with 16 years behind the chair and a degree in hair colour.
Over the years, I’ve worked with and researched lots of different colour brands, which is why everything I teach is brand-neutral. I don’t want to teach you my colour brand -  I want you to understand the science behind yours, so you can formulate with reason whatever brand you pick up.

Through teaching other hairdressers, I kept seeing the same struggles: not knowing when their bleach was ready, struggling to read thier bleach lift and then second-guessing what to tone with.

And I realised these weren’t three separate problems. They were all connected.

That’s why I created the Lift, Read & Tone Method - one clear process that brings lifting, reading and toning together to create more predictable colour results.

I don’t want to teach you formulas to copy. I want to teach you how to formulate for yourself

I want you to be the hairdresser who KNOWS what to do next.

The one who doesn’t need to give another hairdresser the look across the salon and hope they’ll casually walk past your foil.
Because there isn’t always going to be another hairdresser there to save you. The person you need to be able to rely on behind the chair is you. I want you to be able to look at that inspo picture and confidently say, “Yes, we can get you there.” And just as confidently say, “No hun, we’re not getting you there today but let me show you what we CAN achieve and how we’re going
to get there.”

No promising miracles. No crossing your fingers. You’ve assessed the hair, you’ve strand tested when you need to, and you’ve got the proof sitting right there in front of you.

Because a great toner result doesn’t start when you pick up your shade chart. It starts at the consultation. It’s knowing what the hair can actually give you. Choosing the bleach that’s right for the job. Knowing when it’s ready to rinse. Reading the lift you’ve actually got. Understanding what that means for the colour you can create. And THEN choosing the toner.

That’s why I created Lift, Read & Tone as one complete method. Because your toning problem was never just a toner problem. And I don’t want to teach you a list of my favourite formulas that only works with one colour brand. I want to give you colour knowledge you can build an entire career on. Today you might use Redken. Tomorrow you might decide to change colour brands and use L’Oréal. Five years from now, you might be using something completely different. The numbers might change. The colour science doesn’t.

That’s why Lift, Read & Tone is brand neutral. The knowledge goes wherever your career takes you. And imagine what your business starts to look like when you’re not constantly trying to fix the last colour. Fewer bowls of free colour going down the drain. Fewer redos squeezed into your evenings. More clients leaving with the colour you actually planned for them. More of those clients trusting you enough to come back again and again. And eventually, you’re not the hairdresser asking someone else, “What would you tone this with?” You’re the hairdresser they’re asking.

That’s what I want for you. Not just more confidence. A colour business you’re bloody proud of, built on knowledge that belongs to you.