If you are a hairstylist.. you may want to avert your eyes.

Despite past disasters, I colored my hair myself. My hairstylist just moved away, and at my last appointment, I had her dye my hair red… which just felt wrong for some undefined reason. I couldn’t get in with her before she left, wanted my hair fixed before going on vacation, and didn’t want to roll the dice with whatever stylist could get me in quickly. So, although I know the value of salon color, I decided to roll the cheaper dice with Sally Beauty.

I don’t want to over dramatize this, so here’s the photos, and a brief account of what I did.

As I mentioned before, my starting point was a somewhat faded red. I don’t have a great picture of the before, just before I colored it. So I suppose this one will do:

I did the coloring process slowly over 4 days. On the first day, I used a mix of two Wella Color Charm toners – T35 Beige Blonde, and T18 Lightest Ash Blonde. I wanted to see first if I really could tone the red out with out bleaching or color removing. It worked pretty well.

The second day, I wanted to darken the roots a little bit to get a more natural, slight ombre look. I used Wella Color Charm demi permanent in 5N Light Natural Brown. I put it on just the first inch of roots first, let it sit about 10 minutes, then applied to the next inch and a half and waited another 10. Then I rinsed it out. At this point, I thought the brown was maybe a bit dark, and overall, I thought I’d lost the look of being “blonde-ish” and was squarely in brown territory.

The third day, I bleached the ends just a little. I used Color Charm powder bleach and 20 volume developer. Honestly at the end of this stage I felt a little regret; I thought the difference between the ends and roots wasn’t graceful.

Day four I toned the whole thing again with the same toner. This seemed to unify all the different levels. After a couple of days, the roots lightened a little and I was pretty happy with the result. If I were to do it again, I might go one color lighter on the roots. That said, I don’t think I will be doing it again myself anytime soon, as I already know where my next dye job is coming from.