Evan the Colorist

I’m excited to share that I’m now working within Vandross Hair Design in Bucktown. It’s a fresh change that already feels energizing. The space is bright and dynamic but with a calm and inviting vibe.

If you have an upcoming appointment, everything is already updated on my booking site. For future bookings, you can head directly to my website or hit the Book Now button right here on Instagram.

Looking forward to seeing you in the new spot and continuing our color journey together ☺️

Stunnnnning 30 inches of copper

I love Instagram. I love Instagram. I love Instagram…

New product in the salon! I’ve been using this to shampoo my finer-haired clients, and I think it makes the hair feel soft and moisturized, but kind of bouncy and full.

The Serene Scalp Densifying line gently cleanses and moisturizes while plumping hair strands. It reduces shedding and stimulates the scalp over time. If this sounds like something you’d like to try, we have samples next time you’re in the salon!

Another fave copper all-over color. There’s a nice balance to this one, giving enough vibrancy to make you notice, but not so much to look too vibrant, saturated or synthetic.

Should your brows match your haircolor?

I always tell clients that your brows don’t have to match your haircolor, but they do have to GO.

For most of us with brown or highlighted blonde hair, I typically like the eyebrows to be slightly darker than the darkest part in our hair for a natural look.

For redheads that are naturally darker, I think it’s important for there to be SOME warmth or red tone in your brows so everything goes together. The fastest way to break the illusion of colored red hair is to have stark cool-brown eyebrows. In this scenario I’ll almost always bring this up during your appointment.

Lighter red/copper hair on natural blondes is touch and go. Sometimes, blonde brows look really nice with lighter copper or strawberry blonde hair. Sometimes it looks better to darken them a tad.

With that being said, it’s almost always a bad idea to just have me take what’s in the bowl for your roots and paint it on the eyebrows. This should be a customized process, and sometimes your brows will take color differently than your head hair.

If you’re curious at your next appointment about brow color, let’s chat about it. It takes no more time than your regular appointment and it’s only $25 as an add-on.

So it’s your first time having your hair painted instead of foil highlights, or maybe you’ve never had highlights before at all...

Your hair is going to look great! Dimensional and blended, but how come your second highlight will be so much better?

Well, I always feel like the first highlight is about laying the foundation for an overall lightness, getting everything blended, and nailing down the tone that suits you the best. By session #2, your hair will have faded a bit, and the underlying texture of the highlights are revealed. Some bits will have gotten lighter, and some parts of your hair stay looking very natural.

Session #2 is not only about touching up the regrowth of your highlights. It’s about emphasizing the light parts that we want to stay light or be lighter and maintaining some of the shadow in places we want to have depth. In photography terms, I think about it like pushing the dynamic range in your hair 😂! Increasing contrast if we want, push some parts lighter, and bring back depth in other places. Balayage is all about controlling nuance in light/shadow, and its so much more personalized in the second round!

The truth about low-maintenance color:

Do I have clients that only need to highlight their hair every 6 months, or even only ONCE A YEAR? Actually yes, but the real tea is that every haircolor requires maintenance, just at different intervals and sometimes for different services. Here are some examples:

🟡 A 6-month highlight may look good when you come back for their touchup, but to look GREAT over the 6 months, you might consider one appointment in between for a gloss to refresh the tone and blend.

🟠 A 6-week copper retouch might look great from appointment to appointment even though you only get highlights once or twice a year.

Maintenance to me is relative. Small services like glosses in between larger highlight sessions is low-maintenance. Being on a set schedule because your color looks crappy by your next appointment is definitely NOT low-maintenance, nor does it look it.

“How do you decide where to place my highlights?”

This is the most fun part about balayage, that I get to highlight (accentuate) your hair with color! To me, highlighting isn’t following a pattern or technique to get a particular look. It’s about going through the hair and highlighting pieces that will flow together as a key part of your haircut.

I do my best to add the right amount of light or shadow to different parts of the hair to create interest without being too distracting (this is what I hated about the old money piece on “natural” colors.)

Furthermore, painting in light draws attention and expands what’s inside it, while shadow does the opposite. Do we want to play up a certain part of your face? If the hair falls there, that’s where I’ll highlight! Do we need to minimize proportion or create contrast for an adjacent highlight? That’s where I’ll leave shadow.