I'm here to suggest that you could easily save buckets of money by doing your own hair at home. If you've never tried it (or haven't tried it for years) it's much easier than you think!
Firstly, choosing the colour.
The safest thing is to chose something similar to your natural hair colour. If in doubt, go cool, not warm. When I see people with unfortunate hair colour, it's mostly because they're gone with a bright warm colour like burgundy or ginger when they should have chosen a cool colour that looked a bit more natural on them.
I swear by John Freida myself. I've tried a few different colours from their range and they've all been excellent. I'm on 'Deep Brown-Black' at the moment but I have dabbled in some of their very flattering and subtle reddish or purple-ish shades like the 'Radiant Red' shown in the picture.
Secondly, preparations. I make sure I'm wearing something that I don't have to pull off over my head and that I don't mind getting stained. (I generally don't drip dye on my clothes, but just in case). I also remove all the towels from the bathroom and get out an old black towel.
Mixing up the hair colour is easy - then I just slap it onto dry hair. I don't find it makes a difference how clean my hair is or if it's full of mousse and hair spray. I tend to only manage to use about half the hair colour as I've got fairly short hair. Rub it in well so that all the strands of hair are covered. Wipe any drips or smears off with a bit of loo paper (and soap if needed).
I also don't worry too much about the timings. I leave it on for about 20-30 min. If you're feeling nervous about stains, just sit in the bathroom and read a book. I've found that hair colour tends not to stain things like the bath or sink or glass surfaces but will stain painted or porous surfaces.
When it comes to washing it off, I've got a shower-over-bath arrangement with the shower head on a hose. I get right down into the bath to wash the first bit off to avoid splashing all over the bathroom. Then I shower as normal and use the excellent conditioner provided in the pack.
Finally, after a gentle drying my hair is done!
So, are you convinced to give it a go? Or do you have complicated highlights and lowlights or are you au naturel?
I go for much more complicated, but definitely do-at-home. Currently, I'm a dark red-brown, as the result of henna + indigo over dark brownish hair anyway. The indigo made it black for about 3 washes, but it's still a lot darker than I've been for while.
ReplyDeleteI use the pure henna and indigo, which means that dying my hair usually takes about a day - 3 hours for one, and 3 hours for the other. On the other hand, once it's wrapped in glad-wrap and a towel, I can usually go about my normal 'at-home' Saturday without too much disruption.
And the main reason that I use these plant-only mixes is that, having finally gotten my hair to a decent length (I tend to cut it off at about my waist), I try not to use too many chemicals on it. If it was shorter, I would go for something like purple for a bit! But I can't see how I'd handle short hair. I like it long - there's very little fuss!
You're lucky your hair is thick enough to go long. Mine is so thin in peters away to nothing unless it's cut for lots of body, full of mousse etc. and blowdried. Lots of fuss, sadly...
DeleteI've heard many positive comments about Frieda colour but they do not make the bright auburn that I like. Just started DIY after decades at salon, using L'Oreal Mousse Absolue which seems to be a love/hate product- and works well on me. One caution: be sure if you have a lot of grey to buy a product made for 100% grey coverage. The box will say this. Otherwise the greys come out less intensely coloured which can look like highlights or- just a bad job.
ReplyDeleteGood point! Thankfully I've just got a few grey strands at this stage, but going by my parents I'm going to be reasonably grey reasonably early. Still, I'm determined to colour or at least tint my hair until I'm *really* old!
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