Very much want to go to blonde...

[wandabee]

Until the age of 18 or so, I had waist-length hair. It was ragged and frizzy, and was my natural dark color at the roots, gradiating to blonde at the tips (both from natural and unnatural causes; my hair lightens significantly in the sun, but I also used "sun in" and lemon juice to get this result)

Now, having started over with a clean slate (after shaving my head back in October), I'm getting a bit bored with my hair. It's quite fine, and although it can become wavy, has been lacking texture at these shorter lengths.

I'm really wanting to go medium golden blonde, but a) don't want to spend the money on maintenance and b) I don't like the prospect of severely damaging my hair, if I'll be attempting to attain my previous lengths.

Thoughts?

[UltraBella]

My suggestion would be don't do it because of A and B if those are deal breakers for you.

[ScarlettAdelle]

My suggestion would be don't do it because of A and B if those are deal breakers for you.

I second this.

[Katze]

What they said.

My hair was blonde as a kid, up until puberty. Then I copied my older cousins and started using sun-in (VERY damaging, by the way). I did not see my natural color until 2005, when I decided to stop bleach and dye.

Not only do I not have the maintenance hassle and expense, but my hair and scalp are in better shape than they have ever been before. And honestly my ashy brown with golden highlights looks better on me than orangy-fake blonde ever did, though I thought the opposite for a long, long time.

If you have fine hair, it is more fragile, so it will not stand up to bleaching as well as someone with coarse hair. If you have wavy hair, it needs more moisture than straight hair, so it needs extra care if it is bleached.

Although sometimes I do miss it, mostly I look around at all the fake blondes and just feel kind of smug...I don't have roots, my hair doesn't go brassy, split ends and sebhorreic dermatitis are not an issue any more...in short, natural is better.

Of course it is your hair and your decision, but from a former bleach addict, my two cents. :)

[alwayssmiling]

I think I agree with the other comments and I think you answered your own dilema. My big regret hair wise was the bleaching. My hair grows fast and I really hated the root problem so I was touching up every 4 weeks, theres bound to be some overlapping no matter how careful the HD was. My hair looked fine for the first few months but it slowly deteriorated into considerable breakage which meant I had to keep cutting it to level it up. Then when I decided my hair couldn't cope with bleaching anymore there was the problem of growing it out. Dyes broke my hair even more (thankfully I liked Henna but its not for everyone) I have spent a year slowly trimming out all the damage.

HOWEVER saying all that you need to like your hair and feel good about it. I think my philosphy when growing hair is that every stage must be enjoyable (I can't spend 6 months with hair I don't like waiting for the next stage to arrive) and if that means a few highlights and or some moderate heat styling - or whatever - then go for it.

[ericthegreat]

Speaking as someone who went blonde himself, I can tell you that if you aren't willing to spend the money on maintenance, then its a really bad idea. To achieve a nice, blonde shade, you definitely need to either have an experienced colorist or be very experienced with color. You can't just slap on some bleach and think that will give you the shade of blonde that you want. That's the easiest way to either end up with orangey brassy hair or worse burn off all your hair with the bleach. Its really something you should get done at a professional salon, and of course you need to remember to keep coming back to do the roots. Since money and maintenance is not what you are willing spend, this really is not something that you can keep up with.

[Toadstool]

You can't just slap on some bleach and think that will give you the shade of blonde that you want. That's the easiest way to either end up with orangey brassy hair or worse burn off all your hair with the bleach.

Yup, both of these happened to me :rolleyes::)

There is a thread on chemical blondes, can't remember the title sorry.

[Maverick494]

I've been a bottle blonde from age 18 till 22. There is a way to go blonde and look natural. It can be achieved by stripping the colour from your hair and then colouring over it with your choice of (ash) blonde dye. This means that your hair will be severely damaged and that you will keep busy with the upkeep (dyeing the roots every 3 weeks)

Anyway, after 4 years of this hassle, I went reddish brown (I was afraid to become a greenhair if I just slapped brown on it) and have now dyed it to a colour similiar to my natural colour: dark ash blonde/light ash brown.


Although sometimes I do miss it, mostly I look around at all the fake blondes and just feel kind of smug...I don't have roots, my hair doesn't go brassy, split ends and sebhorreic dermatitis are not an issue any more...in short, natural is better.

I do this too. It's so hard to keep bottle blonde hair look good. Some people are infuriatingly great at it (hi FrannyG and Ericthegreat :D) but most of us just fry their hair in the process.

Besides, just because you can't go blonde doesn't mean your haircolour has to be boring.

[Lianna]

I usually encourage people to do what they want. I just got highlights this weekend (first time in years at a salon!), but being blonde means you have to want to keep it neat (do it every month) and cope with possible damage (treat your hair very well after which takes time). So to me doesn't seem like you really want it. Like UltraBella said: seems like "deal brakers" to you.

Perhaps just a few highlights around the face when your hair is a bit longer to do it? :)

[spidermom]

Perhaps a blonde wig?

[SummerSkye]

Ive been a highlighted blonde for years and loved it. It has caused problems with my hair, condition, split ends and major damage. i'm now growing out the highlights but am keeping a small section just around my face blonde. It works well as I still have the blonde look that I like but hopefully without all the damage so maybe you could give this a try.

[Valdeon]

Mmm

WHat the others said.

Also judging from your profile picture your natural color suits you the best :flower:

But if you are willing to experiment, you may get lucky with an easy to maintain golden blond color using L'Oreal Excellence 01. I have a couple of friends who lifted up their quite dark natural hair color to a very decent blond: no toning afrerwards and still relatively healthy hair. Unfortunately, there is no right solution for everybody.

[ktani]

Until the age of 18 or so, I had waist-length hair. It was ragged and frizzy, and was my natural dark color at the roots, gradiating to blonde at the tips (both from natural and unnatural causes; my hair lightens significantly in the sun, but I also used "sun in" and lemon juice to get this result)

Now, having started over with a clean slate (after shaving my head back in October), I'm getting a bit bored with my hair. It's quite fine, and although it can become wavy, has been lacking texture at these shorter lengths.

I'm really wanting to go medium golden blonde, but a) don't want to spend the money on maintenance and b) I don't like the prospect of severely damaging my hair, if I'll be attempting to attain my previous lengths.

Thoughts?

You may find this thread of interest, Bottle blonde grows long! http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=21256

And this one, http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=10495 too.

ETA: And one more http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=6310.

[wandabee]

This perfectly sums up my concerns and thoughts! Thanks for your honest reply :)

[ladylovecraft]

Speaking as someone who went blonde himself, I can tell you that if you aren't willing to spend the money on maintenance, then its a really bad idea. To achieve a nice, blonde shade, you definitely need to either have an experienced colorist or be very experienced with color. You can't just slap on some bleach and think that will give you the shade of blonde that you want. That's the easiest way to either end up with orangey brassy hair or worse burn off all your hair with the bleach. Its really something you should get done at a professional salon, and of course you need to remember to keep coming back to do the roots. Since money and maintenance is not what you are willing spend, this really is not something that you can keep up with.

Everything said here. Being a current bleach-head myself, blonde is NOT an easy thing to upkeep. My hair really isn't damaged at all (I don't have split ends, believe me, I look obsessively :D), isn't dry or course, etc. But it's taken me YEARS of mucking up my hair HORRIBLY to get to a stage where I can do my hair myself. There have been 2-4 times I've lost nearly all of the hair on my head (which was usually about shoulder/apl length), because of botched hair jobs.

Even though I know how to maintain it now, it's still a fussy color and I'm switching over to henna/red veggie dyes. For me to maintain my nearly white shade, I have to fiddle with it quite a bit... and I can never do any of the fun experiments on LHC because it takes to EVERY color it touches! ACV rinses? Brassy. Shampoo bars? Brassy. Coconut oil? Brassy. And eegads, I can never DREAM of using EVOO...

But that'll all be over when my hennahut order comes in! :)

[wandabee]

Thanks for the detailed references! I'll go check out those links now!

[ktani]

You may also be interested in this, http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=148.

No hair damage has ever been reported on hair lightened with honey, even before the Honey threads (this is the 5th and current one) were started, following reports of honey lightening all hair colours, on these boards.

For the Honey thread, everything is in the first post, including pictures at the bottom of the post. Good luck!

[Monkie]

Everything said here. Being a current bleach-head myself, blonde is NOT an easy thing to upkeep. My hair really isn't damaged at all (I don't have split ends, believe me, I look obsessively :D), isn't dry or course, etc. But it's taken me YEARS of mucking up my hair HORRIBLY to get to a stage where I can do my hair myself. There have been 2-4 times I've lost nearly all of the hair on my head (which was usually about shoulder/apl length), because of botched hair jobs.

Even though I know how to maintain it now, it's still a fussy color and I'm switching over to henna/red veggie dyes. For me to maintain my nearly white shade, I have to fiddle with it quite a bit... and I can never do any of the fun experiments on LHC because it takes to EVERY color it touches! ACV rinses? Brassy. Shampoo bars? Brassy. Coconut oil? Brassy. And eegads, I can never DREAM of using EVOO...

But that'll all be over when my hennahut order comes in! :)


I keep telling myself, that as soon as my hair hits BSL, I am going back to this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c0YrvgHmbsE/SfTOjHmPSXI/AAAAAAAAA_0/dgOcbXvJABA/s400/bleachblack.jpg


(That's not me, that's just a random blogger who's hair I absolutely pine for)

[SwordWomanRiona]

Maybe you could get some nice golden highlights by using cassia and/or honey treatments. You would not get blond hair, but if you already have some golden accents, you could bring them out and experiment a bit with natural treatments that won't damage your hair. Those require less maintenance (and much less money). If you're not satisfied, then you could always go ahead to chemical dyes...Just a suggestion.

[ladylovecraft]

I keep telling myself, that as soon as my hair hits BSL, I am going back to this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c0YrvgHmbsE/SfTOjHmPSXI/AAAAAAAAA_0/dgOcbXvJABA/s400/bleachblack.jpg


(That's not me, that's just a random blogger who's hair I absolutely pine for)

Eegads, that is some GORGEOUS hair. I can have my hair this white if I put the effort into maintaining it, but I'm sure any white hair will tell you keeping it this pristine is HARD WORK. Lots of purple conditioner involved... x.x

I've been itching for red for a year now, and though I know it's possible to keep growing my hair this color, I believe the health will exponentially increase once I ditch the bleach for natural alternatives.

Then again, the OP was talking about blonde, not white hair, so I don't even know what I'm going on about. :D

[sarahbrownie]

Why don't you experiment with henna or honey? It seems to me you just need a change. I get this way too when my hair is stuck between length goals and I usually find by changing up my hairstyle or color helps with the need to do something really drastic. A few weeks ago I really thought about going to an APL bob, sort of like Anna Karina from the 60's French New Wave movies. I knew I would regret it but I really wanted to do something cool like that. I ended up waiting 2 weeks like everyone said, I still wanted it, but knew I'd miss my length. Instead I cut some bangs and now have something new to play with.

[Demetrue]

wandabee - I just wanted to say that your natural hair color is beautiful - so rich and shiny and healthy looking!

[justgreen]

I'm addicted to highlights, get them every 4-6 weeks to my roots. My hair is almost down to the bottom of my butt. You've gotten good advice here, there are several of us that get our roots done on a regular basis, we have learned how to take care of our hair . Oils? I don't use oils. I do use conditioners and honey . I always dilute my shampoos. Everyone's hair is different, so you just have to learn by trial and error .