The Best Developer Volume Test For Your Hair Type
It’s experiment time! In this blog post, I’m outlining my experiment where I tested 5 different developer volume strengths when mixed with hair dye, on 2 separate hair types. This will give us an idea of how each developer volume works for lifting coarse hair vs. fine hair.
If you’re interested in learning about the 3 steps to determine what volume of developer you should use, click here. You can also scroll to the bottom of this page if you’d like to watch this developer experiment on Youtube!
Why your hair type matters
If you noticed that I added hair type to the title of this post, know that I did that for a reason! Your hair type is an important factor in determining what developer volume you should be using on your hair.
Particularly when it comes to your hair texture, the diameter of your hair will determine the strength of developer needed in order to alter the color of the hair. Since coarse hair is thicker in diameter (and often contains an extra layer called the medulla), it requires a stronger volume of developer to fully penetrate the hair and alter the color.
That being said, fine hair will be altered much easier with less strength because the diameter of the hair is smaller. For this reason, you should use a lower developer volume on fine hair than on coarse hair.
To learn more about the anatomy of your hair, see my post here.
Perform your own test
The best thing you can do for yourself before dyeing your own hair is to perform a test strand. I highly recommend performing a test strand before coloring your whole head just to be sure of what your results will look like before fully committing.
It’s not a problem to have a swatch size section of hair messed up, but it can be traumatizing to have your whole head of hair come out wrong.
Developers volume recommendations
Developer comes in a variety of different strengths, and some are more common than others. The typical volumes are 10 vol, 20 vol, 30 vol, and 40 vol. I’ve also added 5 vol to the list below because it’s commonly used for toners, and 10 volume isn’t always necessary!
You can get the developers I’ve linked below on Amazon.
***Since I’m sharing the products that I love to use with you guys, this page includes affiliate links to these products. If you take action and purchase a product through clicking one of my links, I’ll make some commission money from it at no extra cost to you. This enables me to be able to continue giving you awesome hair tips, so thanks! ***
Developer Volume Experiment
In this experiment, I tested 5 different volumes of developer against 2 separate hair types. Both of these hair swatches are virgin hair, meaning they’ve never been colored before. Remember that color doesn’t lift color, so this experiment wouldn’t work with color treated hair!
The first hair type is a fine hair, level 7 swatch. The second is a coarse hair, level 5 swatch. To learn more about the level system in hair, see this post here.
On these hair swatches, I used Pravana 8.43. This means that the color was a level 8, copper-gold formula. Since the copper is mentioned first, this means that the color contains 70% copper, and 30% gold.
I mixed this color with 5 volume, 10 volume, 20 volume, 30 volume, and 40 volume developers.
I used a 1:1.5 ratio of color to developer, because this is what Pravana recommends. This means I mixed 5 grams of color to 7 grams of developer. (Technically it would be 7.5 grams of developer, but my scale doesn’t measure to the half gram. It’s such a small difference, that it won’t change anything!)
I then processed these colors for 35 minutes, again because this is what Pravana recommends. You should always follow what the manufacturer recommends especially for ratios and process time for best results with their color.
The results
After rinsing and drying the swatches, I have to say I was a little surprised by the results! The difference from one volume to the next up was hardly noticeable. And for the fine hair swatch, the 20 volume developer results were actually no different than with 40 volume!
But for the coarse hair swatch, there was a noticeable difference between the 20 volume developer swatch and the 40 volume developer swatch.
This tells us that the fine hair swatch does not require 40 volume developer to achieve maximum lift, while the coarse hair swatch did require a higher strength of developer.
Conclusion
In this post, I outlined the developer volume experiment I performed where I colored two hair swatches with 5 different developer volumes. The purpose of this test was to compare how the different strengths of developer perform on different hair textures and levels.
The hair type is important for choosing the correct volume of developer. This is because the thicker diameter of the hair strand will require a stronger developer strength than a finer hair strand will.
Performing your own test similar to this experiment will be very helpful to be sure you are choosing the proper developer strength for your own hair. This will ensure you don’t mess up your whole head of hair when dyeing your hair yourself.
The different developer volumes I tested in this experiment are 5 volume, 10 volume, 20 volume, 30 volume, and 40 volume. I used Pravana 8.43, which translates to a level 8 copper gold blonde.
The hair used was a level 7 fine hair swatch, and a level 5 coarse hair swatch. Both hair types were of virgin hair, meaning they’ve never been colored before.
The results showed that the fine hair swatch had the same results when used with 20 volume developer and 40 volume developer. But the coarse hair swatch did have lighter results with each volume of developer used.
Leave any questions you have on this experiment in the comment section, and be sure to subscribe below to make everyday a good hair day!
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