When your job is a My Hairdresser Colour Consultant, you help so many on their own Colour adventures that it’s so easy to get caught up on their Colour journeys imagining if you too would suit their Colours. Then the train comes back into the station and you realise your back at your desired location.
Until recently.
Lately, I have been feeling claustrophobic. For the last 5 years, I have been in a deep and serious love affair with my Hair Colour - 3 Dark Brown. I have been head over heels with the depth and the way it compliments my skin Tone.
But I have this bad habit of not taking my own advice and spreading my Colour through my ends of my Hair when I don't really need to. And you know what that means - Colour Build Up - that is making my ends look and feel heavy and my Colour is dull. It's awful and I need a change.
But to what? I suit Dark Brown and Blonde is never an option for me and to be honest I dream of being a Light Copper Blonde, until my better judgement kicks in. So I concluded, obviously, I am craving some lightness and warmth, while still keeping my current Colour depth.
And with that, I put on my Consultant hat and laid out my path.
My Natural Colour is a 4 Medium Brown while my current Colour is 3 Dark Brown, but I have been known to put a squeeze of 1.10 Blue Black or a dash of 5 Light Brown in to fatten up my Colour mixture. Don’t forget that Colour Build Up I mentioned before. So my first step is an easy one: Colour Remove and paying attention to my ends.
After 3 rounds of Colour Remover, I have budged out that grotty old Colour, feeling a little more refreshed after each round.
It's funny because I am Naturally Dark, my Colour looks the same except for these huge Golden/Red Tones that sparkle through my Hair, which I am happy to see as it shows my Colour Remover has been a success. I start to feel relief and can start to see the life back through my Hair. Plus I don't mind this Colour, but I know Gold isn't really my hue.
Next step involves painting in some Highlights through my ends to add variation to my Colour. I want my Highlights unstructured and quite casual, so I will paint them through my ends, leaving a couple of centimetres off my scalp.
For my Highlight mixture, I use Bleach and 20 Volume Developer. I want my Highlights slightly Lighter but not too Blonde. I found this part quite exhilarating - I have used Bleach plenty of times on others, I have never used it in my Hair… I consider myself a Colour purest (which also just made me sound like an elitist, but whatever).
Now post Colour Remover and Highlighted, all that's left to do is Colour my roots with 5 Light Brown and Tone my full head with 7.1 Ash Blonde.
And presto!
The 5 gave me a Darker base Colour at my roots that I like, while still being lighter than before and my ends are a nice, Light Brown with delicious Dark butterscotch and caramel flickers thanks to the Toning.
Although it might not be dramatic, it's the perfect change up I needed and it’s fun to be on my own Colour adventure, until the New Year where we begin writing about the Colour of 2017 and ill reconsider everything all over again.
Lucky I know a great place to get Hair Colour from!
