Ladies a word of advice from experience: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it! If you have something that has been working for you and that is giving you great results and creates little to no damage in your hair… stick with it. I had to learn this the hard way and I really wish I hadn’t.
When it comes to hair and color, I’ve always had a bit of an adventurous streak. Red, purple, pink, blue, green, teal, lavender…I’ve done them all. Initially my hair color journey started off in the salon, but as time passed I realized that in actuality I could create the same effects I was paying for at the salon at home for less. Now I know, a couple of you reading this right now are probably shaking your heads right now thinking, “yup, big mistake. She should’ve kept going to the salon”. Well actually you’d be surprised, but no.
For two years, I experimented with hair colors and amazingly enough saw my hair actually getting stronger and healthier than it had been in a long time. How? Well, part of the process of adding color to my hair required me to be constantly conditioning it. Even though there were times that I had to bleach my hair to get to a blonde that would give me the desired base I needed to get the color I wanted, my hair was strong and I had no breakage (I will discuss the process on another blog).
So then, you must be wondering if all this is true then what was the problem? Impatience. See, as much as the process I was using had worked for me, my desire to get to a certain color drove me to seek out a quicker method to stripping my hair down. The color culprit: the ever allusive silver. Now while my hair was full of pale blonde highlights that nearly covered my whole head, I couldn’t manage to produce a shade that would be conducive to a silver.
In hindsight if I just would have gone through the process I had been using 2 or 3 more times, its very likely I would have achieved the results I wanted, but like I said: impatience. So with an “I want it now” attitude I found myself at Sally’s trying to find the perfect dye. BIG MISTAKE! Up until that point I had been achieving all my lightening using Clairol’s Born Blonde for dark hair (Pictured below)
Ok ladies, I will say this right now: I WILL NEVER ADVOCATE ANYTHING THAT I HAVEN’T PERSONALLY USED. I will also never back any products that have not worked for me and by worked for me I mean that it did not cause damage to my hair while still achieving the results I was seeking. That being said, while this worked for me it may not work for everyones hair type, but it will definitely lighten your hair with just one box. You can see below how much my hair lightened from one use.
As you can see it definitely took me to blonde. So who did my hair debacle happen? I continued to use this product every time i had to touch up my roots or if I wanted to go lighter and it was working. One day, however, I decided that I wanted to try to go silver. Up until that point I had been doing purples and pinks. I figured in order to get a good silver base I would go from the pale blond that I was at the moment, to an ash blonde (don’t ask me why I thought that would be best). So with that decided I made a trip to my local Sally’s. It would be the worst mistake I ever made.
I started looking at colors and decided on a Wella ash blonde. I then had to grab some developer to mix with the color. I had been accustomed to doing the box dye, so little did I know that the 40 volume developer I grabbed was not what I should’ve grabbed. Not knowing what awaited me, I went about mixing them and then put it in my hair. I left it in for an hour… I later found out at most I should’ve only put it in for 5-10 minutes!!!
The moment I started rinsing, my hair started coming out. At the end of my wash, I ended up with about 2 -3 inches of hair at my crown and the rest of it felt like mush. I had inadvertently given myself a horrendous mullet. Although it was a hard decision for me I ended up having to cut my hair a la pixie to start fresh.
The one good thing is that my hair is growing back in strong and healthy, but trust me this was a lesson that I could have done without. So ladies, next time you’re thinking about switching up your hair routine, remember if its been working and has kept your hair healthy,… LEAVE GOOD ENOUGH ALONE.
Roz in Focus 