Can Toner Make Your Hair Fall Out? Understanding Toning and Hair Health

If you are the one fashion freak who wants to colour hair with your changing moods, you must be aware of the products used in hair colouring and one among them is a hair toner!

You probably know what a toner is used for in the process of hair colouring right?

Just for a short recap, a hair toner is used to enhance the tonality of your hair colour that is to add a more vibrant tone to the dye you have coloured your hair with!

But with all these cool looks, comes a question in our minds, whether can toner make your hair fall out?

Can Toner Make Your Hair Fall Out

Use of any chemical product on your hair can cause damage to your hair in the long run. But when it comes to toner, it should not make your hair fall out all at once, but definitely nothing is permanent and so is the effect of a toner.

So, when you keep on reapplying hair colour and keep on adding toners in the process, it can eventually cause frizzy hair that might be prone to breakage!

This article will help you discover in detail all about hair toners, the right way to use them, whether they cause any damage to your hair and if it does, how you can prevent the damage or find ways to reverse the damage.

Does toner make your hair fall out?

Damaged hair will be prone to falling out, so let’s find out whether toner damages your hair and if so, how and why!

Hair toner is needed when you want to enhance the tonality of your hair colour that is to bring in the right shade to your hair.

There are different types of toners available these days, with different concentrations of ammonia in it. There are ones which contain ammonia in lesser quantities and there are others that contain ammonia in a bit more concentration.

Also, there are toners that need to be mixed with developers and others that can work alone to adjust the tone of your hair colour.

Now, the toners that do not contain ammonia will be of no harm to your hair because ammonia is the one ingredient that does the most damage to your hair.

And the toners that need to be mixed with a hair colour developer can harm your hair because a developer opens up the cuticle of your hair in order to make your hair capable of receiving the hair dye and changing its base colour.

So, toners with no ammonia and the ones that do not need to be mixed with developers will not cause any damage to your hair.

Advantages and disadvantages of hair toners

Before you take a step and decide to colour your hair, it’s better that you take a look at the pros and cons of hair toners, so that you can choose what’s the best for you:

Advantages of using hair toner

  • Hair toners help to bring on the actual colour of the hair dye and also enhance the tonality of the colour
  • When the hair colour fades after a time and it’s time to redo it, applying just a hair toner can bring back life to the dull hair colour
  • Hair toner is less damaging than hair colour and so when you just want to do a touch up to the fading colour, a hair toner does the job perfectly
  • Even by using toning shampoos and conditioners can help maintain the hair colour for a longer period of time 

Disadvantages of using hair toner:

  • Toners are after all artificial chemical products that are supposed to cause a certain harm to your hair, be it temporary or permanent because it’s a type of hair colour changing product
  • The effect of toner on hair colour is not permanent and hence you have to keep reapplying it again and again that can cause hair damage in the long run

The correct way to apply toner in order to avoid hair fall out

A toner alone will not cause that damage to your hair when applied in the wrong way with the wrong products. 

So, first let’s find out the correct way to apply toner:

  • Do not apply toner with a wrong volume of the developer:

Mixing toner with a 10 volume or up to 20 volume developer is considered safe. But anything above a 30 volume developer will cause frizziness and dryness to the hair and hence cause breakage and fall out.

  • Do not keep toner longer than 20 minutes:

Keeping toner more than the instructed time will not enhance the hair colour, but can have side effects like thinning of the hair, dryness and hence breakage.

  • Use toners that do not have high chemical concentrations:

Toners that have high concentration of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia will certainly cause damage to the hair due to the presence of those ingredients. So, go for toners that have the minimum concentration of these chemicals. Check out the best hair toner with no chemicals on amazon.com.

  • Avoid using toners if your hair is already damaged:

If your hair is bleached, or prone to frizziness and dryness due to previous hair treatments, using toners can aggrevate the problems.

What happens if you leave hair toner on too long?

Toners are used for cancelling our the yellowish or orangish tone of your hair as toners are generally in the tinge of blue or purple.

So, if you try to keep toner for more than the time that is instructed on the manual card of the box of the toner, your might end up getting a purplish or blueish hue.

Also, it might be difficult to apply any brown or blonde colour later.

How often can I use toner on my hair?

Not only for a toner, but it’s a general rule of thumb not to redo any hair treatment or styling process before a time span of 4 weeks.

This is because during this time, your hair would be recovering and gaining back its strength to return to normal. Your hair would be fragile, weak and prone to damage during this period of weeks.

Is toner safe for damaged hair?

If you see the following songs of damage, never apply toner to your hair for some weeks:

  • If your hair is too dry and frizzy that even moisturizing shampoos are not able to set your hair normal
  • If your hair is too dull and lifeless, devoid of shine, it means your hair is completely stripped of moisture
  • If you notice strands of hair coming out during shampoo and post brushing
  • If your hair is breaking off while brushing 
  • If your hair is losing volume and bounce

See you soon!

That’s a wrap for this post, hope you enjoyed reading with me. Stay tuned for more styling and care tips. Till then……

Keep it simple, keep it fashionable!