Surprise hair colour?

[Freija]

Just wondering - for any of you who have been dying your hair for a long time, then started to grow it out, did you end up forgetting what your natural colour looked like, and then being surprised when you finally saw it?

I had a moment like that a few months ago - for years, I was convinced that my hair was somewhere around a dark/mid-ashy brown, and I used first box-dye then henna compulsively to get the red I loved. Then, last autumn, I got fed up with the constant dyeing and regrowth and decided to let it grow.

In the spring, when I had a couple of inches of virgin hair, I cut off almost all the dye (I still have a little on the ends) - and lo and behold, my natural hair was light brown! And warm light brown, too: there's a lot of gold in it, and some red. I can best describe it as 'bronze', although my cousin says it's 'light auburn'. Totally worth losing about two years' growth. :p

Has anyone else got a similar story? :)

[restourceful]

Maybe not exactly the same but when I stopped dying and let my grays come in I thought my hair would be snow white all over my head, like my maternal grandmother's was. Instead, I have a silver cap on the crown of my head, the front hairline about an inch deep is blonde, and my underside near the nape of my neck is still pretty auburn. Nothing like I thought it would be but I love what it is! :inlove:

[squiggyflop]

im not growing mine out but i was very surprised when i saw this picture of my natural color
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg69/squiggyflop/IM000030crop-1.jpg
yup i havent seen this color on my head in years.. it fades in the sun the longer it gets.. past shoulders the ends start turning coppery and past waist it will start bleaching strawberry blond

[Viechen]

I dont know if this counts but I have no idea what my natural hair color is. I think its some sort of brownish but thats as close as I can get. Some day I will stop dying my roots but for now I am trying to decide if I should take the plunge and go blonde :P

[Gem]

I didn't forget - my hair color changed. It's darker now and has less red than when I started dyeing my hair in high school (it was ash blonde/brown with red highlights, I dyed it red, and now it's ash brown).

[Luckysock]

Yes, my hair is so much warmer than I remembered. I thought it had more of an ash tone to it, but now that I've grown my colour out its much more on the caramel side than I expected. It might go more ashy come winter ...

[myrrhmaiden]

I thought mine was going to be a light ash brown by now. I dyed the lengths to match, but now as it continues to grow, it is much lighter than I thought. It is med ash blonde! I haven't seen much, save for a little root in probably 15 years.

[AspenSong]

I kept my hair blonde for a looong time because I felt like I was just meant to be blonde. haha. I was blonde as a baby and growing up, and then it started to darken a bit when I was about 13-14 and then the "dye years" began! I was set on keeping it the very light blonde I'd always had.
Then two years ago after my Dad passed away I stopped going blonde and let it grow out - I was def surprised. I thought I'd have darker roots and go back to my ash blonde on the ends, like before. Nope. It's an Ashy Brown. No blonde in sight, but a bit of golden-ish highlight when you get the light to hit right. I like it though! Now that I'm older, I like the darker hair with my blue eyes much better. :)

[LouLaLa]

I got a shock.

I dyed my hair blonde for years to get that oh so 2000's honey look and thought my hair would be very dark when I quit dye as I belived they hype that all blonde kids darken as they age.

I quit dye about 2 months ago now and I discovered my hair is silvery medium ash blonde which was rather a nice surprise I must say :) I didnt have a clue what colour it would be!

Im so glad im not beholden to dye anymore I got sick of trying to tough up my roots before they got obvious. Too much hassle!

[JenniferNoel]

Generally no. My natural color isn't so much of a color as a blank, dark gray mousy canvas for coloring over. Bleaches to blond in an instant, and soaks up black dye just as quick. But it makes my natural skin tone appear sickly.
I've never been surprised by it, it's always given me the same disappointment year after year.

[skay]

Yes, I was surprised.

I had dyed my hair off-black or reddish-brown/henna for years.

When I stopped dying it in a few years ago, I was suprised to see how very black my hair was (there were more white as well but I wasn't suprised about that - I was coloring/dying to cover the whites).

[Qadupae]

My hair used to be a gold and ash medium brown, but I've been dying for 6+ years and only stopped within the last 4 months. My hair is now a weird medium ash only brown, almost to the point of being a dark steel gray. I find it strange because my eyebrows have always been that kind of tone, but never my hair, but now my hair is matching my eyebrows ^_^

[Joliebaby]

I'm growing out my color and don't really know yet what it's going to be like - the roots are too short to really tell. I was a blonde as a child too. So was my brother, who is pretty dark now and he has the same hair type as I do... I'm thinking my hair probably dark blonde-light brown... Which here in Scandinavia is probably considered medium brown :D But I'll wait and see. I do know that my roots seem to blend extremely well with my current color, in the underneath layers I can't see where the colored parts start. The underneath hair is always darker on me and the top /face framing hair is a tad lighter. Personally I'd be happy if my hair turned to be brown; I'd like level five-ish...

[Kiraela]

Oh, definitely! I first started dying my hair when I was 12, because it was a dull, ashy, dark-mouse brown - compulsively changing colors every 2-3 months for six years from red, to black, to bronze, etc... Then, at 18, I stopped dying my hair - I just got sick of it all and when I moved in with DBF, he taught me to accept myself (:crush:). I didn't like my roots at all, at first. Then, about a year in, I realized that I had a gorgeous dark, rich color with dark brown, black, and bright red strands.

Now, I'm completely dye free, and love my color!

[Bianca]

I guess I knew I wasn't the light blonde I used to be, but other than that no surprise. Now that my virgin hair is to my chin, it have had some time to lighten and not look as ashen as it did, when it was only a couple inches long and right next to the light bleach blonde, where it looked extra greyish, greenish - boring.

Today, I love my hair color. It's very golden (a little reddish even sometimes) in bright lights, dark blonde inside. Can look greenish under harsh lighting, but I can live with that :D

[kwaniesiam]

Yes. I started dyeing my hair when I was 12. I didn't see my natural color except maybe 1" of roots at a time until I shaved my head in May. When it grew out it was a much darker ashy brown than I remembered, it probably darkened with age. I didn't like it at all, I remembered why I started coloring it in the first place and immediately when back to henna :o

[Antipodienne]

I was surprised to find a bunch of grays at my temple when I stopped dying a few years ago at the age of 21 (although I shouldn't have been since my dad's grayed when he was 20).

[Luckysock]

Yes! finding gray has been a new, post-dye, experience for me too. I don't know if they are new grays or if I just never knew they were their because I was dying - who knows...