Master Colorist Beth Minardi presented on the Cosmoprof Center Stage at America’s Beauty Show, March 21-23, showing off her color expertise through beautiful models and expert advice. Her presentation was full of insights into how to achieve color perfection. Here are 7 tips from Beth Minardi on how to create flawless color that will exceed client expectations.

1. “It’s so important to consider skin tone and eyes. If a client asks for pink hair even though it doesn’t work with her skin, then she doesn’t want to be pretty. It’s ok for people who want to make a statement to not want to be pretty. But if they want to be pretty, you really need to work with the skin, the eyes, the personality and the clothing.”

2. “Are any of you blending grey on men who want to look like silver foxes? I am. The reason I invented 10 ICE is that it’s a great blonde toner, but it’s also for every guy in the world who’s going grey. If you mix the 10 ICE in my liquid demi and you put it on salt and pepper grey hair, it will make it super shiny and a little more silver. 10 minutes.”

3. “We bleach the hair to palest yellow. Remember this, everybody: a pale yellow bleach-out looks like a banana. Not the skin of a banana, the fruit of a banana. There are two ways to color hair – my way and the wrong way. Once you have bleached hair to white, you have burned the cuticle off the hair and nothing that you do is going to help.”

4. “Joico makes wonderful colors called Intensities – they’re direct dyes. But I know not to put them on a client’s scalp. Why did I not put the Intensities on her scalp? Staining. All of these direct dyes that every companies is coming out with now do a great job of staining; that’s why they’re here. But you can’t put them on the scalp. So here’s what I do. I apply my demi liquid formulas to the root area and then paint the Intensity through the hair. So when this client turns in the light, you see this gorgeous shade on shade that I think looks great, and grows out beautifully.”

5. “I see too many clients with a thousand highlights in the front and nothing in the back. Often women will say to me, ‘why didn’t my husband tell me I have blonde hair and a brown ponytail?’ This happens when a lazy hairdresser doesn’t put anything in the nape. If a woman has medium length hair or longer and there’s nothing in the nape, but the dance of ten thousand foils in the front, that doesn’t look right. When highlighting, use half as many foils in the nape and don’t bring it up as light, but please put something in the nape.”

6. “Hair that is porous or in lousy shape will always grab a red darker or drabber than hair in good shape. Even if you want a neutral or coolish red and the woman’s hair is beat up, do not use a red violet or a straight red. You’ll go pink or you’ll go burgundy brown. Always make sure you use copper and gold.”

7. “This is so important everyone! If you are doing a global double processing, putting bleach all over, please don’t put powder lightener on the head. It’s gritty and we can’t get it on there. Joico makes something called Joico Cream Lightener that glides onto the head and conditions and lightens. 1 oz. of the Joico lightener is mixed with 2 oz. of 20 volume developer. As soon as that is applied, you can take out your powder lightener and start bleaching the rest of the hair with powder. Why? The hair closest to the scalp wants to come up blonde. The cold hair shaft and hair lengths do not want to come up blonde. So you many need more power.”