Hair Color Stretch Your Dollar

Aging gracefully is a thing of the past -- and, for many Americans, so are gray hairs. About 3/4 of women and men in the US color their hair, not at cheap treat by any stretch of the imagination. Thinking of doing it yourself? Here are some handy hints to help your look like you just stepped out of the salon.

The average cost of a professional single-process hair-color treatment is about $62. Considering that professionally dyed hair needs to be touched up every six weeks, you can rack up some $500 in salon bills each year.

Some people try to save money with at-home color kits, which can cost anywhere from $3.92 to $9.94 at Walmart, depending on the brand. With each home coloring lasting about eight weeks, the annual expense comes to around $50 -- significantly less than the salon alternative. Unfortunately, these savings can come at a price.

With do-it-yourself hair-color kits, you run the risk of damaging your hair or ending up with the wrong color. "At home, customers apply color from roots to end, but I only do what's needed, and I don't overlap color," says Kacey Welch, colorist at Neil George Salon in Beverly Hills. "A client can damage their hair long term, and corrective color is more expensive."

Fixing a bad dye job with a professional corrective color treatment usually costs more than the original single-process color. Also many professionals mix colors to get the perfect fix.

Buy Yourself More Time by mixing only one-tenth of the dye in an at-home kit and use a Q-tip or toothbrush to apply the color to their roots and part lines. With careful application, these touch-ups can stretch your dye job by one or two weeks If you decide to take this route, make sure to use a ammonia-free dye like Clairol Natural Instincts.

Good Housekeeping and Consumer Reports both named Clairol a top at-home hair-dye brand. You can get the dye at Walmart for $6 to $10 per box. Factoring in the costs of combining salon visits and touch-up kits, you'd spend approximately $420 per year, knocking off the cost of about one salon trip from your yearly expenses. Keep in mind that you'll probably have to use some of that money toward replacing stained towels and cleaning up the mess after your touch-ups.

All things considered, there's no real shortcut to great hair color. But with caution and care, you can buy yourself some extra time between salon visits