Just when I try and accomplish something LESS high maintenance, I end up unhappy and even more frustrated.
I've been thinking about for about a year now to start taking steps to let my natural grays start growing out. But wanting to do so without the drastic and yucky "line" that would form in letting this happen with the natural progression.
Here I was assuming this may be a fairly easy practice, but much to my chagrin, not so much. Especially when your natural hair color is dark brown. If my hair was blonde, it would definitely be an easier process.
I admit I should have done a little more research before I tried to begin this process, but that was my mistake. So here I am irritated and feeling defeated.
A history of my hair color - natural is dark ash brown. I've colored my hair over the years most colors under the sun...mainly staying within the reddish tint, but I've been relatively boring the last 5ish years with my plain jane dark brown. Because we all know that once you add any red to your hair color it's difficult to get it out in the long haul of things. I've been going gray for a while now, but honestly, the majority of it is at my temples, not necessarily the whole top of my head quite yet. However, the silver foxes at my temples always decide to start making an appearance pretty much the day after I would dye my roots. Le sigh. And I wear my hair up a lot, so there's not much hiding it...I was forced to dye my roots usually every 3-4 weeks. And that was me being lazy. It would be more like every 2 weeks if I were to actually stay on top of it.
Point is, I was growing tired of having to keep up with coloring my gray roots every month or so. It may not be too often to some of you, but for me, it's just too much of a hassle and awfully high maintenance for my taste.
So I got it in my head that I'm ready to start the process a few months ago and I start researching photos. I found a salon that appeared to have a good gallery of photos of hair color that was a little outside of the box, so I figured I would try it out. Here are the examples I took in:
So much to my disappointment, the colorist looked at my hair and said we could definitely get it there, but it's going to take quite a few appointments. Being human and always striving for instant gratification, I was bummed, but she did say that we could take it light enough that day to make a difference. She showed me some colors and I specifically pointed to the brass blonde and said "I DO NOT WANT THAT!" I told her anything as close to gray/ash tone as she could get, I would be ok with. She heard me and we got to working on it. 2 hours later, I thanked her and left astonished. Because you know, when it comes to real life confrontation with hair stylist/colorist, I can never say if I don't particularly like something. A Groupon of $60 + $60 on top of it, here I am.
Now I'm no brain surgeon, but this looks pretty f'ing brassy to me! I was super upset and immediately started calling around to try and find someone to fix this horribleness. I made an appointment with a funky salon in downtown Dallas seeing that they had a gallery of pretty extreme colorings and had great ratings, so I figured I'd give it a shot.
I went in a week after my bad experience and talked to the lady there - she totally understood my frustrations and said she was definitely right in saying it will be a process, but that doesn't mean I had to settle for brassy blonde and be unhappy with it through the process. I was confident she would help me and she really "got" what I was wanting and showed her the photos. So she put some demi permanent dark brown on my hair that day and sent me home with deep conditioning treatments to use 3 times before I come back in 3 weeks later. Forked over $80 and off I went. About a week before the appointment, the demi permanent color was starting to fade and I could see a little of the brass showing through again, so I was super glad for my upcoming appointment and was really hoping that she would help me out. 4 hours at the hair salon confident that I would be happy with the babylights she had spent a couple of hours brushing in.... anddddddddddddddddddd NO. She said "oh, it's a beautiful beige!" and "it's definitely more ashy as opposed to brassy." All I saw was brass on the top of my head on my bangs on my forehead. I said "wow, it's still brassy." She saw my disappointment and showed me the back, where I will admit I could see it was a little more ash in the back and the babylights were a better effect so it wasn't so choppy throughout my hair, but I still wasn't satisfied. I kept trying to stay optimistic. She told me to get this purple shampoo they had and it would help with the brass until I came back for my 2nd round of operation gray highlights. She rang me up...$215 is your total. Excuse me, WTF?!?!
I've been trying for 2 weeks to be ok with my hair. I've used the purple shampoo and kept telling myself, it looks better and to try and have patience, that it will get to where I want it.
But you know what? Fuck this. Excuse the language, but after trying to be optimistic and have patience, I am literally sick. I'm out over $400 and still HATE my hair. Really hate it. Not even remotely "ok" with it. Blonde tones and blonde hair is gorgeous on other people, but it looks terrible on me and my skin tone. And I'm not ok with it. I have an appointment on 4/16 for my 2nd round and I'm cancelling. No way am I going to pay another $200 to be even unhappier and keep shelling out that amount of money for 2-3 more sets of highlights to finally get it to where I want it. At this point, I should have just bit the bullet and had someone bleach my hair completely out and dyed it dark gray. It would have looked better and by now, the damage to my hair is just as much that would have caused. It looks dry and frizzy and the color is horrible. This is today and yesterday.
I'm doing a deep condition overnight tonight, then going to Sally's and getting dark ash brown and going straight back to where it was before all of this mess over the weekend. I'm so sick about this experience, but it was a hard lesson learned.
At this point, dying my roots every month is a much better option and letting my hair grow out and become healthy again is the route to go. In a few more years once the grays start to infiltrate my whole head, then I will revisit this transition, but at that point, I'm going to go the 'completely bleach out, then dye my hair gray' route. F all this other BS.
Public Service Announcement: So for any of you contemplating this same transition, do NOT attempt to do it the way I attempted to if you have dark hair. You will just be disappointed...and out a lot of money. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment