I acquired a box of blonde hair color....it was free and I sat here wondering what it would look like. I was blonde as a little kid. Well my wondering got the best of me and i'm not sitting here with hair color in my hair waiting for the time to finish so I can rinse it out. I had medium brown hair...oh I so hope this doesn't end badly like I think it will!
I wish I had seen this a few days ago. Did you use it yet?? My cousin gave me such great advice on coloring your hair blonde. Of course, she told me after I already bleached my hair, lol!! I hope yours came out better than mine did.
My cousin told me that the next time you bleach your hair..you should buy the bleach from Sally's. You should also add a little bit of shampoo in it as well. This is to keep your hair from totally drying out. Also..wait 2 weeks or so before bleaching your hair again. You should also use a really good moisturizing shampoo & conditioner (and hair dye) afterward.
I tried bleaching my hair, and my roots were already growing back by the next day!! And because I got that little piece of advice too late..my scalp is so dry & flaky now. I think when my friend bleached my hair in 08, she did the shampoo in the bleach thing.
I seriously advise against anyone bleaching their own hair, especially with professional strength products like the ones at Sally's, unless you are experienced with it. If you don't leave it on long enough, you will end up with clown hair. Leave it on too long and your hair will be totally fried. Sometimes you'll get fried clown hair, depending on how healthy your hair was prior to bleaching. It's so hard to fix that mistake too. You can try to dye over it, making it a darker color, but the dye could take unevenly or turn out differently than it was supposed to. I walked around with moss greenish brown and grayish hair for 3 days after I tried to dye my bleached-out mess dark blonde. Another time, I didn't get the bleach on evenly and ended up with hair that was the same color and pattern of an orange and brown calico cat.
Just my input tho. I've messed my own hair up more times than I care to count. And color correction at a salon will run you around $200+. And once you screw up, you more than likely WILL end up there. I say save yourself at least $150 and get your hair dyed at a salon.
My hair is naturally medium brown, and I've been a bottle blonde for a decade now. I used to bleach and then dye, this entire double process thing that took forever, was expensive, and was probably very dangerous and damaging to my hair. Now I swear by L'Oreal Coleur Experte, the two-tone highlights-plus-color kit. I use Toasted Coconut and wind up with very, very natural looking, only gently highlighted hair. It's a little reddish, but at least I don't look like a punk rock Marilyn Monroe anymore!
Some one correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, there is a big difference between bleaching or coloring.
I color mine all the time, but would never dream of bleaching it. Best left ot the pros.
What I've found that with color that you can get over the counter, it will get lighter to a point, but not to damaging, and never looks like the box. And being old, them gray hairs, are stubborn as all get out!
shcirerf, I am starting to get white hairs right in the center front of my head, not gray, WHITE. I vary from flipping out and wanting to dye over them to wanting to just go with it. LOL
And I had meant to say "go to a salon to get it bleached" instead of going to one to get it dyed. Getting bleached and getting dyed are two very different things. Though sometimes you have to be bleached to get dyed, but that's a whole other issue.
I have some greys, sort of "steel" colored, much to my chagrin. Both of my grandmothers had steel-grey hair by the time they were 40, so I know what's in my future.
What I've found helps is to follow the instructions on my hair color for "resistant greys," even though I don't know if I'd call mine "resistant" or not; still, I feel like I get good coverage by leaving my hair color on for about ten minutes longer than the minimum.
One thing I do appreciate: grey hair lightens more easily.
I've had my hair bleached professionally once...my hair didn't get dry or anything, so I would reccomend that. If price is an issue, see if there's a hair academy near you. Back home, getting my hair done was cheap, but now that I'm in a bigger city it's super expensive, and being a college kid, I can't afford that. And besides that, I'm a natural blonde, who chooses to go dark, so I can't just let mine go lol. The hair schools around here are very closely watched by the teachers and I've had great luck so far!
Sally's has a nice selection of decent quality color, and it's cheap ($10 for the color + developer), and almost everything else in that store is cheap too.
I made the mistake of coloring my hair with a permanent blue-black a few months ago, it's OK...it's just so permanent. I'm probably going to use Ion's demi-permanent color from now on, it's a lot less harsh.