Need advice on long brunette hair change to all silver, please

[DarleneH]

I have a long-haired friend who wants to stop coloring and go all silver, all at once, or at least with as few steps over time as possible and as little damage as possible.
She's willing to cut to roughly armpit length first to get rid of the drier, damaged ends.

How doable is this really?
Can it be done at once (even if it takes a day or two of working on it to get there) or will it have to happen over days or weeks?
Is it achievable at home, or is she going to need to get this done in a salon?

If this is not doable at once and at home, what would be your best advice?

[Sarahlabyrinth]

I have a method I used over several years but your friend may prefer a faster method.

[ETJ CURLS]

It can be done. But I've only seen professionals achieve this, and it takes them HOURS, with lots of very precise steps, and expensive products to keep the hair intact. Jack Martin Colorist (https://www.instagram.com/jackmartincolorist?igsh=d25zam92MHVwbHJk) specialises in this type of transformation, and he freely shares his process and formulas.

[Messyhair]

I have a method I used over several years but your friend may prefer a faster method.

This was my thought as well. :lol:

[Christi May]

Probably her best bet would be to go to a reputable hair salon that has a lot of experience with gray transformations. Normally I don't love hair salons, but it seems to tricky to DIY. I wish her all the best, though. I think gray hair is so beautiful!

[maborosi]

I did this with my mom's hair, and it was a very long process. It took me about 2 days in total over a weekend to get her from her old color to silver/white. She also has extremely dye-resistant hair (part of the reason she wound up going white/silver instead of continuing to color), but if I remember right, it basically went like this:

1) Washed hair, no conditioning, allow to fully dry.
2) Heavily, heavily saturate (it should be dripping) hair with coconut oil. Allow it to soak into the hair overnight.
3) Without rinsing out the oil, proceed with bleach. What volume she'll need will vary. Rinse out bleach.
4) Apply a toner in the color of choice. Rinse out.
5) Follow with protein treatment (We used a heavy-duty one.), rinse.
6) Follow with deep-conditioning treatment (I did an SMT(thread here) (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=128)for her hair), rinse.
7) Follow with LOC method to moisturize (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=118167).

Over the following weeks, she did weekly heavy protein treatments + SMT. She would also use a Manic Panic dye (they are conditioning and don't damage the hair) in lieu of conditioner once a week as a leave-in deep treatment for color-correcting.

We didn't use anything like Olaplex (I wasn't really aware of it at the time), but that may be able to slot into this routine nicely. The coconut oil prevented most of the damage from the bleach. I've done this, too, one time when I was bleaching over henna'd hair. I did an old post about it on my blog here. (https://happyhairdays.blogspot.com/2015/11/hair-color-adventures-bleaching-over.html)

I hope that's useful!