Happy Tuesday, everyone!
This week, I’m here to share some hair renewal tricks! But first…
Let me tell you a story of a little dirty blonde headed girl that kept her hair almost exactly the same for 20 or so years. One day, she decided she didn’t want to be dirty blonde, she wanted to be blonde blonde. So she did it. By herself. With boxed hair dye. This what I call my “Slim Shady” phase. In my head, it was actually my “Harley Quinn” phase, but these days I’m more honest with myself. One day I got really bored of my hair and decided I wanted to do bayalage… also at home. So my mom and aunt sat down and did kitchen salon bayalage on myself and my cousin. It was traumatic, my hair turned almost black, a sizeable chunk fell off my head, tears were cried. I hated it. The top part of my hair was nearly black and the bottom was a golden blonde. Reasonable people go, “my hair is really damaged. I should just not touch it for a while.” I’m not a reasonable person. I went to Walmart and bought 2 boxes of ash blonde/brown dye (oh, box dye, why do you call me so?). I dyed my entire head, at this point I just wanted it all the same color, I didn’t even care what color it was. I made the comment to my husband that “I would just go grey with him” because he’s 23 and already pretty salt and pepper. I also made the comment to my sister that “it could turn out blue for all I care”. Be careful what you wish for.
News to me, if you dye your hair over recently dyed hair it can cause a reaction and bad things happen. I’m just thankful my hair didn’t fall out. The first time I dyed my hair, I looked at it and said “hmm, this looks kind of grey.”
Reasonable people: I need to stop. I need to go to a salon. This is not working.
Me: Let’s dye it again.
I had only used one box of the ash color, so I decided to go for round two. By some magic, my hair had still not fallen out. PLEASE do not try this at home, I can also guarantee your hair will fall out if you do this. Luckily, my hair has absorbed the stubbornness from my brain and refused to leave my head. Round two of dye, what do you think happened?
a) My hair turned into a beautiful bayalage
b) My hair turned ash blonde
c) My hair was still grey
The answer is c. Any sane person would have called that 20 minutes ago. It was a color I referred to as “glavender”. The roots were black and my tips were blue/grey/purple, depending on the light. Remember when I said be careful what you wish for? It was the kind of color tumblr girls beg for. Not the kind of color a socially awkward IT girl at a community bank aims for. At this point, I was laughing. It was definitely to hide the pain, but I gave up. My hair eventually faded, and after a few months I went to a hair dresser I trusted to not make fun of my antics. She complimented how strong my hair actually was and was very surprised how well it held up. I told her my hair care routine, and she said I did everything right (you know, after frying it). So here I am, sharing how my kept my hair healthy and restored much of its shine, body, and volume. Let’s begin!
1) STOP DYING! Every time you dye your hair, especially lighter, it causes damage that breaks down each strand. Eventually those strands get so weak they fall out and you lose all of your hair. If you had one bad dye job, please go to a professional to get it fixed. Better yet, avoid box dye altogether.
2) Oils, oils, oil. I used many different kinds of oils (linked below) on my hair. If it said strength, shine, vitamins, yada yada, I bought it. There were two I swapped between most often, though. As soon as I got home, I lathered my hair in oil and put it in a loose bun. When I say I lathered it, I mean my hair looked like I hadn’t showered in months. I think this was really the key to keeping my hair healthy. I had only done this for a few days and I was already getting compliments on how healthy my hair looked.
3) Deep Conditioning. This is something I’ve always done and still do. It’s a great tip for you curly headed girls out there with super tangle-y hair. Every time I wash my hair, I let the conditioner sit in it for a couple minutes. When my hair was super damaged, I swapped normal conditioner out for hair masks and deep conditioners twice a week. Make sure you are using gentle products or ones for colored hair so you aren’t further damaging your hair in attempts to help it.
4) No heat or styling products! My hair is naturally curly but if I leave it to its elements its just naturally frizzy. I had to use a hair dryer, but I didn’t put mousse or gel in it and I didn’t use straighteners or curling irons. When I dried my hair, it was on low heat and as little as I needed. I braided my hair a lot and put it in ponytails during this time, but it was necessary that I wasn’t applying direct heat to my hair. I know, you should let your curly hair be or you could lose your curls. But my hair was so damaged it would barely curl anyways, it looked like tangled wires or like someone had pulled the tape out of a cassette. As soon as I saw adequate improvement, I started to use my regular products and a diffuser to curl my hair regularly. This leads into my next tip…
5) It takes time! Your hair will not fix itself overnight. Quite honestly, it will not fully return to being normal until new hair has grown in. That means getting regular cuts and trims and being patient with your hair. When I started to curl my hair again, it took a few weeks for it to look normal.
I hope my tips and tricks help those of you that struggle with damaged hair! If you have any other suggestions for hair care, leave them in the comments below!
Until next time,
Harlie
