Hello my lovelies! As you might have noticed, I didn’t put a post up last weekend, and that’s because it was my birthday! But I’ve also been working on this post for you, so here we are today!
So, as you can probably guess from the title of this post, I’ve gone blonde! It took a lot of thought before I actually decided to do it because of having henna in my hair (disclaimer: henna is permanent and if the henna you’ve used on your hair contains metallic salts then you risk your hair literally burning off your head if you bleach it). Lucky for me, the henna I used is Lush Caca Rouge and hasn’t got any metallic salts in it!
Hairdressers won’t touch hair that has has had henna on it due to never being able to fully know what henna you have in your hair and it’s very hard to get out. Something I only learnt AFTER I had hennaed my hair. Whoops!
Being someone who likes to switch up their look a lot, and someone who isn’t afraid to just go for something, I decided I was going to go blonde myself. Yep, you heard me right. I decided that I was going to take my brown/auburn hennaed hair and go an ash blonde. Crazy idea right?
So what did I do? I made a list of everything I was going to need and sent my sister off to salon services for me, because if I was going to bleach my hair to death, I should at least do it with the proper products.
What did I get for this hair challenge?
I bought a bucket of bleach, a big bottle of 20 volume developer, a lightner that I thought was a toner when I bought it to find out it was not, a hair colour, olaplex and then my sister and I picked up some more stuff that was bound to ruin my hair from the supermarket.
This all happened the day after my birthday, when my sister, her husband and I were babysitting my younger brother and sister (they’re teens but we just had to make sure they didn’t burn the house down when my parents were away) and we had my niece and nephew round. My sister and I are pretty close and have a great laugh whenever one of us are doing our hair so we knew it was going to be one hilarious ride from bleaching my hair to finally getting it presentable. With me doing my sister’s hair in between mine.
To start my hair process, I actually used two lots of colour b4 on the henna on my hair about a week before deciding to go fully blonde because I had heard that it strips henna from your hair. It took a very small amount out which you can see below, and then I slapped on a semi-permanent ash medium blonde which went pretty dark on my hair. It was then that I thought, lets just go fully blonde!
Side note: Please don’t fry your hair off at home, my hair is very resilient and can withstand a lot of bleaching and processing! But like I always say, you do you!
So onto my first process! For bleach one, we put the bleach over the mids, then the ends and then finally the roots of my hair (as the roots are virgin hair and the heat from your scalp makes the bleach process faster) which resulted it white roots and carrot orange lengths which we had to laugh at! The henna turned out to be extra stubbon than we expected but we went with it.
Then we went on to bleach number two which helped a bit and we went to a pale orangey yellow!
Next up we decided to try the lightener which I don’t really think did anything for my hair but I’ll let you be the judge of it.
It was at this point that we decided to try a box blonde dye, which meant taking a trip to tesco with my Griffindor hat on at 8pm at night… and my sister persuaded me to get a platinum blonde kit which is essentially more bleach and an ash box dye. After the platinum bleach kit we ended up with a pale yellow look with platinum roots, making a good amount of progress!
Then we put on the ash blonde box dye applying to the roots first and viola! Blonde hair at last! It still needed a bit more toning for my liking at this point so a few days later I put another ash blonde over the top of everything and got to a colour I like.
Since my hair had been through hell and back, and was essentially just a straw birds nest on my head at this point, I made sure I got myself some good protein, repair and moisture treatments to give my hair a bit of love.
I used the olaplex treatment and then paired that with a heavy layer of love in conditioner on one night which I found helped a little, and then two days later I used the Aphogee two-step protein treatment paired with a shea moisture repair and strengthen mask which was like a miracle treatment for my hair, the protein treatment is something I would recommend to anyone using bleach on their hair because it transformed it from straw to soft and bouncy once again.
The Aphogee treatment is bizarre experience because the protein step is a very liquidy orange product which you saturate your hair with, then use a hair dryer to warm it up to make your hair go rock solid, which you then rinse out and leave on a moisturising conditioner on for a few minutes. After rinsing that out your hair feels so much better!
Here’s before the Aphogee treatment and after:
I’m currently using protein and moisture masks every time I wash my hair which is around 2-3 times a week which is definitely helping my hair. I’m also washing my hair alternating between a gentle purple shampoo and a co-wash from Noughty haircare which is a brand I love so much (not sponsored, I just love their products!) along with some of their treatment and styling products.
So, here’s my hair now!
And that is how I went from auburn brown/ginger hair to blonde in two days! I definitely wouldn’t recommend you do this yourself at home if you don’t want to damage your hair; but if you are going to do it like I have, then I would 100% recommend the Aphogee protein treatment, a good moisture restorative hair mask and a leave in conditioner. I would also not dry your hair with a hair dryer or use heat on your hair for as long as you can. I personally only ever use heat to diffuse my hair but now that it’s shorter I let it air dry with my natural curls.
My plan for my hair now is to gradually go a little more of an ashy tone, more so on the ends of my hair as that’s where I’ve got slightly more golden tones from the henna. And I will also keep on using protein and moisture treatments regularly to help my hair bounce back more.
So, that’s my hair! Have you ever changed your hair colour drastically in one/two days at home? How did it turn out? Let me know in the comments!
I love my new hair colour, it brings out my blue eyes and I think it’ll bring out my freckles when the weather gets a bit warmer. If you want to change your hair colour, go for it! And if you’re unsure what colour to go, you can always try semi-permanent colour without the risks!
And with that, have a nice weekend lovelies!
Love,
The Weight Of My Worlds 