Hair Nightmare

For the past month or so I have been contemplating my hair. I like it blonde best, but I get bored after a while. I was getting fed up with the upkeep and dry ends that blondes invariably experience, so I decided to switch up and go brown. I also decided to go brown on a budget.



I decided to do it myself. After all, I know what I'm doing. To make hair darker, you need to deposit color into the pores instead of lifting it out. If you slap a dark color over blonde, it will essentially slide off because depositing color is a two-color process. So you need to "fill" the pores.


Starting out blonde


After the fill and color

I filled it with a gold/violet color. I then put a neutral brown over the fill. The camera makes it look much better than it actually did. The roots were a beautiful golden light brown, and the ends faded into shades of dingy blonde and ashy brown. As a trained professional, I would never recommend anyone get ashy colors (unless it's an ashy high lift blonde). Ashy brown hair looks dull and shines green in the sunlight. Yes, it is very ugly.



So I went back to Five States (which carries my favorite color line, Redken) and got 5N (Neutral) and 3VR (Violet/Red). I picked 3VR to neutralize the mix of gold and ash, and 5N to tone down the vibrant colors of 3VR. I ended up with this:



This was the best angle I found to show the results. My roots were a vibrant purple and faded through the strand into awful ashy brown. I know the picture doesn't do the awfulness justice, but I wore a hat for the rest of the week while I figured out what to do. I sobbed over the prospect of having to cut off the hair I'd been so diligently growing out. I knew I had to back off on doing it myself. So I went to Brittany who does practically my whole family's hair. She bleached out the purple and covered it with brown to leave me with this:



A normal brown! It is, most importantly, an EVEN color! It does have a bit of an ashy tone, which I can easily remedy with a shampoo/conditioner that deposites red into hair. But it's EVEN and I only had an inch cut off!

So, after the disastrous hair experience, here's my advice: Always go to a professional. Do you know who does professional's hair? Other professionals. While I may know what I'm doing, I don't have an eagle eye view of my hair and can't see every angle. I can't see how the color is affecting my hair in the back. I also can't see if I've colored every strand thoroughly. I also have an emotional attachment to my own hair, which can cloud my decision-making ability.

Be assured, I will never do my own hair again. What a nightmare.