WHY YOUR HAIR IS BRASSY (AND WHY PURPLE SHAMPOO ALONE WILL NEVER FIX IT)
Professional Color Advice · Hair Maintenance
Why Your Hair Is Brassy (And Why Purple Shampoo Alone Will Never Fix It)
A 24-year professional colorist explains what's really happening to your highlights, the complete system to fix it for good, and how to get the right products through me.
I want to start by telling you something that might completely change how you think about your hair.
Your highlights are not fading. Bright highlights cannot fade and get darker. It is literally impossible. Color does not work that way.
So when you look in the mirror and your hair looks darker, more orange, more muddy than it did six weeks ago, something is building up on your hair. Not fading. Building up. And until you understand what that buildup is and where it comes from, you will keep buying purple shampoo and wondering why nothing is working.
I spent 24 years as a professional colorist on Newbury Street in Boston. Two-time Best of Boston. I have seen this exact situation thousands of times. And I am going to explain what is actually happening to your hair, exactly what to do about it, and how to get the right products for your specific hair directly through me.
A quick note before we get into it: this is what I do for a living now. I am an independent MONAT Market Partner, which means when you order the products in this post, you are ordering through me, not a random link or a stranger online. You get my professional eye on your specific situation at no extra cost, and you get a real person in your corner the whole way, someone who stays involved and makes sure you are getting the results you came here for. That is the whole reason I do this.
"Think of it like dirt on a white shirt. It is not going to look as bright. You need to clean it. You need to freshen it. That is exactly what is happening with your highlights."
The Real Reason Your Hair Looks Brassy
The most common culprit is one that nobody talks about: hard water. If you live anywhere with mineral-heavy water, and that is most of the United States, those minerals are depositing onto your hair every single time you shower. Calcium, magnesium, iron. They coat the hair shaft like a film. And over time that film does exactly what dirt does to a white shirt. It mutes everything. It adds warmth. It makes your beautiful crisp highlights look dull, brassy, and muddy.
Regular clarifying shampoo will not remove it. Regular shampoo absolutely will not remove it. Purple shampoo deposits a violet pigment to counteract warmth, which helps temporarily, but it does not remove the mineral buildup that is causing the warmth in the first place. You are treating the symptom and ignoring the cause.
I know this because I lived it.
I moved out west a few years ago to an area with extremely hard water. I have a water softener. I have a shower filter. And my water is still hard enough that when I got busy and stopped doing my maintenance routine for a few months, my hair told me immediately. It started looking grabbed and brassy. It felt dry and brittle. It was hard to get a brush through. And my products, which I knew were excellent, were not performing the way they should.
Nothing was wrong with the products. Everything was wrong with the buildup preventing them from working.
I also hadn't changed my shower filter in five months, which was two months overdue. So I replaced the filter and I did the Malibu C hard water treatment twice in one week, waiting seven days between applications. The difference in my hair was immediate and dramatic. I could comb through it easily. It felt genuinely clean for the first time in months. And my highlights looked bright again.
This is what I do for a living
Tell me what's going on, and I'll build your routine with you
Email me and describe what you're seeing. I'll walk you through exactly what to order for your hair and your water, and you'll be ordering directly through me. That's the whole point of asking first instead of guessing. Email Me for Adviceor reach me directly
megangrahambeauty@gmail.com
Brassy, warm hair before treatment (left) versus bright, cool, maintained hair after (right)
But First: The Problem Has to Start at the Salon
Before we talk about what you do at home, I need to say something that most colorists will not tell you, because it reflects on them.
If your hair was not lifted to the correct level at the salon, no amount of home maintenance will ever fully fix it. Period.
When I say lifted to the correct level, I mean your colorist needs to take your hair to a very pale, almost white yellow before toning. No warmth remaining. When that step is done correctly, the tone your colorist applies goes on clean and true. Your highlights look exactly the color they should. And your maintenance at home keeps them there.
When that step is rushed or skipped, the toner is being applied over warmth that is already in the hair. The result looks okay in the salon chair and then turns brassy within two to three weeks no matter what you do at home. If this sounds familiar, the conversation you need to have is with your colorist, not your shampoo.
Assuming your foundation is right, here is the complete system I use to keep my hair bright, healthy, and as close to salon-fresh as possible between appointments.
The Complete Anti-Brassiness System
The more processed and blonde your hair is, the more disciplined your maintenance needs to be. Most people do one step. The women with truly beautiful, maintained blonde hair are doing all of them.
This is the foundation that makes everything else work better. The Jolie shower filter removes chlorine, heavy metals, and other contaminants before they ever reach your hair and skin. I chose Jolie after a lot of research because the filtration quality is genuinely superior to most options on the market. It also looks beautiful in the bathroom, which matters to me. I am an aesthetic person. I am not going to put something ugly in my shower.
Replace the filter every three to four months. I learned this the hard way when I stretched mine to five and my hair paid for it immediately.
Shop the Jolie Shower Filter
Even with a good filter, minerals still accumulate. This is where the Malibu C Hard Water Treatment comes in. The kit includes a shampoo, a conditioner, and individual packets of the Malibu C crystal treatment. I mix the packet directly into the shampoo, apply it to my hair, and let it sit for five minutes before rinsing. Once a month if my hair feels good. Twice a month if I notice any dullness or dryness creeping back in.
This is the step most women are missing entirely. And it is the single most important thing you can do to allow your other products to actually penetrate your hair and do their job. You cannot moisturize hair that is coated in mineral buildup. The moisture cannot get through.
Shop Malibu C Hard Water Treatment on Amazon
The Malibu C Hard Water Wellness System, shampoo, conditioner, and treatment packets
Once a week I use the MONAT Clarifying Foaming Vinegar Rinse. This keeps my scalp balanced and my strands free of any product buildup that accumulates between my monthly Malibu C treatments. It is gentle enough for weekly use and it makes a noticeable difference in how clean my hair feels and how well my other products perform.
Every one to two weeks I use the MONAT Purple Shampoo and Conditioner. Now that we have removed the actual cause of brassiness with the steps above, the purple shampoo can do what it is actually designed to do: maintain the tone of your highlights between salon visits. It works beautifully as a maintenance tool once the underlying mineral issue is addressed. It was never meant to be the only solution.
MONAT Violet Lights Purple Shampoo and Conditioner, toning maintenance between salon visits
Everything above keeps your color looking its best. The MONAT IR Clinical System is what keeps your hair itself healthy, strong, and growing well. I use the IR Clinical shampoo, conditioner, and serum every single wash. This is my non-negotiable. Beautiful color means nothing if the hair underneath is thin, brittle, or shedding. The IR Clinical system addresses thinning and damage at the follicle level, which is where real change happens.
If you want to know whether this system is right for your specific hair situation, email me before you order. Wrong products produce no results. Right products change everything, and I will help you get exactly the right ones.
Why Order Through Me Instead of Somewhere Else
You can technically find MONAT through other links online. Here is the honest reason I think ordering through me gets you a better result.
A Trained Eye, Not a Guess
I spent 24 years reading hair professionally before I ever sold a bottle of anything. When you tell me what your hair and water are doing, I am assessing it the same way I used to for clients in person, not handing you a generic recommendation.
Everything I Recommend, I Use
Every product on this page is in my own routine. My before and after photos are mine, not stock images. When something did not work as expected, like my own hard water setback, I told you plainly instead of pretending my hair is always perfect.
Personalized, Not Generic
The most common reason MONAT does not work for someone is the wrong products for their specific hair, not the products themselves. Emailing me first means you are not spending money on trial and error.
You're Never Doing This Alone
Ordering through me means you have direct access to me anytime you want to check in, adjust your routine, or talk through your results. That kind of hands-on support is not something you get from a random link with no one behind it.
The Bonus Nobody Talks About: You Will Save Money at the Salon
Here is something my clients used to discover and it always surprised them.
When you maintain your highlights properly at home, your colorist can actually see what is in your hair when you sit down in their chair. They are not looking at mineral buildup and trying to figure out what is underneath. They are not re-highlighting old pieces trying to chase a brightness that the buildup is hiding.
That means fewer foils. Less processing time. Less damage. And less money spent trying to fix something that was never actually a color problem.
The maintenance routine I described above takes me maybe twenty extra minutes a month. The return on that time is hair that looks and feels noticeably better, color that stays brighter longer, and salon visits that cost less and cause less damage.
"Your colorist can only work with what they can see. Give them clean, well-maintained hair and the results will speak for themselves."
Signs Your Hair Needs This Routine
You might be dealing with hard water mineral buildup if:
- Your highlights look brassy or orange within weeks of a color appointment
- Your hair feels dry and brittle even though you are conditioning regularly
- Your hair never feels truly clean right after washing
- It is harder than usual to get a brush through your hair
- Your highlights look darker or more muted than they did right after your appointment
- Your products stopped performing as well as they used to
Any one of these is a signal. All of them together means mineral buildup is almost certainly involved.
Ready to fix your hair for good?
Let's build your routine, and you'll be ordering through me
Email me and tell me what is going on with your hair. What products you use, what you are seeing, where you live. I will tell you exactly what I would do in your situation, and I will get you the right products directly, matched to your hair instead of a generic list. Email Me to Get Startedor reach me directly
megangrahambeauty@gmail.com
Disclosure: I am an independent MONAT Market Partner and may earn a commission on purchases made through the links in this post. All opinions are my own and based on my genuine personal experience with these products. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition. Individual results depend on consistent use, overall health, and lifestyle factors. Always consult your physician before beginning a new health or hair regimen.
