h i g h l i g h t s

Recently received the photos from the prewedding photoshoot for our selection, and realised that I've a long-overdue post.. hee.. Was scouring the internet for good places to highlight my hair for the prewedding shoot, and came across Koinonia Salon. Recently set up by Shua (previously from La Coco apparently) last year. Anyway the fiance was looking at La Coco for his haircut, so we decided to give Koinonia Salon a try.

Pauline, their Creative Director, I must say is a really patient lady who takes pride in her work! =) The first time we were there, the fiance tried their cut plus a perm, Pauline was discussing with me options for highlighting my hair for the photoshoot, even though I did mention earlier that I was not planning to do it that day as it was too early before the shoot.

2nd time we were there for his cut plus perm 1 week before the photoshoot, she let me take my time to choose the colours (and I know how long I take to decide on things sometimes hee, especially since this is my first time highlighting my hair or dying my hair at a salon for that matter!). As highlighting would take a much longer time, I had earlier made a separate appointment for myself the next day. Really appreciated that despite me not actually engaging their services either time, they still treated me as a customer and provided me a drink & snacks while waiting for my fiance (ignore the fact that I ultimately spent more in 1 appointment than his 2 appointments LOL).

So on to the my first ever highlighting experience ever!

I chose a copper gold-red sort of colour for my highlights, as I already had reddish-tone hair from a previous home DIY dye job, so anything too drastic like an ash-tone would mean bleaching my hair, and I prefer not to damage my hair too much.. Left the selection of the base colour to Pauline's professional judgment. ;)

That's the start of wrapping my hair in foil! So she chose a 'Chestnut' base colour for me, and offered to use a Herbal dye for it (less damaging than normal chemical dyes), so glad to further reduce the damage to my hair.. =)

That's after all the wrapping is done and they leave it under a rotating UFO thingy LOL... They used the same thing for my fiance's perm.

After washing off all the dye and a 1-step Mucota treatment, that's a happy me!
In case you were wondering, they curled my hair with brushes and hairdryers, it's not a perm...

Close-up of my copper highlights against a chestnut base! I'm no expert (being my first time highlighting) but I like that it's quite natural looking (i.e. not chunky, Pauline was really very detailed, separating out each strand of hair painstakingly for the highlights) and yet contrasting enough to be able to show the highlights, which is what I wanted for added texture to my hair in the photos.

Kudos to her for her skilled hands and eye for detail! My fiance was also impressed by the way she cut and permed his hair so 'intricately' (hmm can't think of a better word at the moment), detailed & deft yet don't feel rushed.. By the way, neither of us are sponsored or have shares in the salon LOL, just happy with our experiences with them so far.. I would say they are worthy of belonging in the higher-end strata of salons, yet prices don't seem that 'fall-off-the-chair' kind, or maybe it's just that she was really nice to give me quite some discounts as I did several treatments within the same visit.. ;)

Oh which reminds me, they seem to have different promotions every month which they SMS to clients. Think this month's is a discount off colour/highlight treaments.. Hmm why not last month when I did mine? LOL...