Wigs: Altering a Wig's Color

One of cosplay's on-going challenges is trying to find wigs in the same color pallette that those wily animators use. Even with the current fashion trend towards bright, unusual colors like lilac or silver-blue, it still can be hard to cough up something in sea green or streaks of dusty fuschia. We're still doing a lot of experimentation in this area, but here are our notes so far ....

It's sometimes hard to find a wig that's just the right shade of reddish-brown, let alone find one that is the perfect shade of bright green. You may have been lucky enough to find something that roughly matches what you want, but it could do with some fine tuning. Some wigs can be "nudged" a few shades lighter, darker, or closer to the right color with spray highlights or spray color. The artistically inclined can actually add in highlights as they are usually drawn on an anime character.

Spray highlights are sold in realistic colors, like brown, auburn , black, and blonde. One brand of spray highlight that we've been able to find consistently is Jerome Rusell. You may need to hunt a bit more for spray colors that will work with wigs in "unnatural" colors. Places that sell theatrical makeup sometimes carry sprays from manufacturers like Kryolan.

Spraying the hair is pretty easy. Be generous in covering up your spraying area: it's easier to lay down more newspaper than it is to explain to your roomate why there are random purple stripes on the carpet. It helps to have the wig up on a styrofoam head or wig stand and if you use very light strokes.

Please note that this technique is not useful if you have to seriously alter the color of the wig! If you have a blonde wig that you want to make purple, coating it with purple spray will just make it look "streaky". Even if you could completely coat the top layer of wig hair in the new color, as you move, the underlying layers of blonde hair will show through the purple. Also note that hair dye sold for human hair is not very effective for dying most synthetic wigs. Synthetic strands don't have the "pores" for absorbing the dye.

[One of the experiments we want to try some day is using a dye for synthetic fabric on wigs. - Daifuku.]

[We've also seen great results with an airbrush. It's way more expensive than a can of spray, but you can use a much wider range of colors. - Spiky]

If you have time to experiment, you may be able to use very odd color combinations to produce some interesting results. We've seen Jackie take a bright yellow wig (think "smiley face" yellow) and make it look sandy blonde with the right application of black spray highlight.


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