I am someone who gets bored with my hair color fast.
Since I was in elementary school the color has been ever changing and I probably couldn’t even tell you what my natural color is. I started off in my younger years with highlights and in middle school I discovered boxed dye and started to play around. I have dyed my hair every color from black to red to purple to blue to my latest venture, blonde.
Anyone who has ever colored their hair knows that coloring your hair isn’t necessarily healthy, especially if you have thin hair like I do. You have to be really, really careful when dying your hair.
What people don’t know is some colors are more damaging than others. Of course if you’re not a natural blonde and you color your hair blonde that involves a lot of harsh chemicals in your hair and if you plan on going drastically blonde and using a lot of these chemicals, it should be done professionally. Dying it a blue black color is also not healthy because if you want to dye it again, harsher chemicals will be needed to remove the color.
A main chemical present in hair dye is ammonia. If you were to take a piece of hair that has been exposed to ammonia, it will look like a piece of Swiss cheese. This chemical is corrosive and will damage your hair and your scalp as well.
Another chemical is peroxide. Like mentioned before bleaching your hair uses a lot of these chemicals, mainly peroxide. If you don’t care for your hair the right way peroxide will cause your split ends to break off and that will only make the rest of your hair continue to break off. It’s always safe to get a heavy trim before bleaching or lightening your hair and I suggest doing this professionally. I have tried it the bleaching myself and it just resulted in a lot of dead ends and an unpleasant yellow orange tone.
Recently I did professionally take my hair from a medium/dark brown to blonde. It was something I tried last summer and It did not work out how I wanted it to. My hairdresser started by cutting six inches off (yes, I freaked out) because bleaching my hair with that many split ends would have caused for unhealthy, stringy looking blonde hair. Because I did cut off a decent amount of hair, after bleaching it heavily twice my ends feel better than they have in a while. Below is a picture of my hair before my hairdresser touched it, after my first set of highlights, and my final product.
When dying your hair you HAVE to keep your ends moisturized. To keep my ends moisturized after I get out of the shower I use Biolage Hydra Seal Leave In Crème ($22) throughout my whole head, and then I use about a pump (I have fine hair and this product will make my hair greasy if overused) of Moroccan oil ($43) on about the last two inches of my hair. Then I blow dry my hair and my ends feel like silk. It’s amazing how healthy my hair feels after using these products as opposed to letting it air dry.
Moral of the story, be careful when you dye your hair, and make sure to take proper care of it when you do.