Update: NEW HAIR!

Guess who got a new hairdo! 

I finally decided to take a plunge and get my hair sorted once and for all. Bearing in mind, I've never been to a salon before to get my hair professionally dyed, I've always heavily relied on box dyes and general trial and error using salon professional dye to try and get a colour that I'm happy with. 

This is going to a reaaaaally long and detailed post on how I decided what colour and style I wanted pre-salon visit and the whole process of getting it done in the salon so if you're interested please read on! 

To start, here's a few pictures of what my hair looked like before I got it done: 

GAH IT WAS SO BAD. Notice how my hair is like 3 different colours? It wasn't so bad when I had my trip to NYC in the first picture but the second picture was the most recent, taken last month - you see my dark roots, a chunk of brassy blonde and the rest is just stubborn red that refuses to change colour no matter what I put over it. Seeing this picture just made me go like, what the hell has happened to my hair over time? 

The main problem with repeatedly dyeing your hair red is that it'll just stay in your hair for the rest of your life until you cut it off. It wasn't a colour I was going to get rid of unless I went to a salon (or bleach it myself, but I really don't want to bleach it myself because a) I don't know what I'm doing and b) I'd like some expert advice on it). The explanation for the blonde chunk is that when my roots grew out just before the summer, I decided to stop dyeing my hair red and try and go lighter instead so I used professional salon dye to lift my virgin black roots in the hopes that it'll change the red too - turns out it only changed my roots and not my red ends... Oops. Then as you can tell, over time, it just faded and 3 hideous and different shades ended up in my hair. 

Before the Salon

Soooo, I went to seek some expert advice from my friend who's a stylist at a salon in South London and discussed with him what I want my hair to look like and how it would be achieved. Being the salon virgin I am, I obviously showed him something that was really unrealistic and said "I want this" it had some nice platinum blonde in it. Then a couple of weeks later, I found another picture that was more realistic and would probably suit me more. I wanted something low maintenance so dark roots but a different and warmer colour.

I'd advise anyone looking to change their hair colour to properly look into it first to get an idea of what you want. Look at lots of pictures and get an idea of how the colour you want would match with your skin tone, clothes you wear etc. There's nothing worse than rocking up to a salon wanting something unrealistic or finding out that you've chosen something very high maintenance which in turn will be very expensive! 

At the Salon

I was SO excited to get my hair done in the afternoon that I couldn't concentrate on work on the day LOL. 

Got to the salon and the first thing my friend did was cut my uber long hair shorter so it's easier to manage and work with - no point dyeing my whole hair if I was going to get it all cut off right? 

Just so you have an idea, this is approximately what the length of my hair was: 

And I had this much snipped off within the first 5 minutes of arriving:

So at this point my hair was about just below shoulder length which was a nice length to work with, of course it wasn't cut yet so I had to remember it was going to be even shorter later! 

My hairdresser / friend / person I was trusting with all of this started bleaching my hair to strip it to that lovely ginger colour that appears when you bleach asian hair. You can see in this picture how much my roots have grown out. He wasn't bleaching all the way to my roots though because bleach is quite harmful to your scalp, it's just a nicer option overall to not have to bleach your roots unless you're going for that all round blonde look (which I wasn't - remember I said I wanted dark roots). 

The challenge here was getting rid of the red.

After the foils were all on my head, I was sat under this big revolving heater that helps the bleach develop for about 20 mins. 

You can see my hair at the top of my head has become grossly ginger already and ended up looking like this after washing:

Looks like a bad case of roots growing out LOL.

It's worth mentioning I had to have another round of bleach applied to my hair because the first round didn't get rid of that stubborn redness in my hair, it was still lingering in the ends of my hair and looked like a sunset. I'm not sure if this picture above was the picture after the second round of bleach but yeah, after the second round my hair looked perfectly and uniformly ginger. 

This next part is kinda long.

After that, the colour was applied. My hairdresser mixed 3 different colours to apply, one was for my roots which was a dark colour close to black, the second was a light brown and the last was a ashy blonde colour for my ends. The idea was to blend all 3 into each other so it  looks like a nice fade. I think he was aiming to try and make it look as natural as possible by blending. 

After that was all done on foils and left for another 20-30 mins, it was washed out multiple times and toned (I think? So much stuff was applied to my hair that I have no idea when it was toned @__@). Finally, my hairdresser got to work cutting it into style and then blowdrying it. 

BUT.

He stopped halfway and said he didn't like the colour, it was like a ashy-khaki colour so he ended up applying bleach shampoo to strip the colour down again and re-apply a toner to it to try and get that caramel-dark-blonde colour he was aiming for (notice I said he was aiming for, at this point I was just trusting that he knows exactly what I want LOL). 

After another couple of washes and sitting with my head in the sink for another 5-10 mins, the colour was perfect. A little bit more trimming and blowdrying and my hair was done! He even tonged it for me so it looks salon finished.

Verdict

I'm sure you're wondering, the whole process took about 8 hours - yes it was very long but it would've been less if I didn't have to get 2 rounds of bleach and if the colour came out right the first time round but hey, shit happens. In a sense, I'm really glad I didn't try to attempt this myself at home. 

The length was actually the thing that surprised me most, I was expecting it to be kept a bit longer but actually, I really like the length. When it's worn straight, it's shoulder length and with it styled and curled, it just sits above shoulder length. I don't know if I'm ever going to go back to having it long as I had before anymore! 

As I wanted, it's going to be low maintenance with my roots gradually growing out. Only thing is with this colour is that my hairdresser mentioned that I'll need to come back to get it toned in 6 months time which actually isn't too bad, I think I'll be due for a trim around then as well so it works perfectly. 

I also want to say that I am SO appreciative of the time and effort my hairdresser put in for me, I was pretty much his only customer for the day, there was another lady he cut hair for when my bleach was processing but after that it was just my hair and nobody elses. I honestly don't think I would've had the same time and attention given to my hair if I went somewhere else to get my hair coloured. It's always nice to have someone you can trust that will do a good job and spend absolutely ages on your hair especially if it's something like this. He knew exactly what I wanted and was more excited to work on my hair than I was getting it done! 

Here's two pictures of what the colour looks like in very different lighting / environment.

This was straight after it was done in the salon: 

And a couple of days later in a different lighting:

What's interesting is when taking selfies with this hair colour, it looks different in a darker lighting - more like caramel brown but then in bright spotlight (such as in a salon or in the bathroom), it looks more blonde like the first picture. I love both! Still so chuffed with my new hair - I've found a new love for curling my hair when it's this length.