I am no longer blonde

[Venefica]

I was at the hairdresser today to trim my end and cut my bangs, I have not been able to dye my hair for a while due of some scalp rashes and I have been worrying if my hair is growing for while my roots are showing they are not showing enough since I am supposed to be blond and my hair is dyed black. Anyway I got my bangs cut and now they are almost completely virgin, and here is the thing, they are brown. The hair growing out of my scalp is brown. Do anyone know why that is, when I started to dye my hair perhaps seven years ago or so I was golden blond and now I have a rather dark brown color to it, is this normal? I have no problem with it it just means that the black when I dye my hair will become darker black since I never bleach, but it seams strange to me that the hair of a grown woman should so drastically change color.

[Desdesdes]

My daughter is a natural dirty blonde, but her roots have always grown out much darker. She was very golden as a child but even then her roots were always darker. Perhaps your hair is the same way and will lighten as it grows?

[Suze2012]

To be honest it seems strange to me too..but I've had a similar kind of experience (although it was when I was a teen).

Mine wasn't about a colour change but when I was younger I had only just to shoulder length straight hair with only the odd kink in it. (I was never allowed to grow it any longer as a child and when it got to that length Mum took me to have it all cut back very short)..but..when I was a teen I wanted a bit more life in my medium/fine straight hair so had a perm (serious disaster and one I never repeated! lol!).
But..when my Mum passed away just before I turned 18 I started to grow my hair and once it got past a couple of inches long it was curling.
When it got to the same length as it had been when I was a child it was very curly and nothing like it had been when I was younger and had reached that length.

I hope you are OK with this change though. :)

[Venefica]

It have not done this before. I was pale blond as a child and when I was six or seven my hair darkened to golden blond which is the color it have had until I was 23 and started dying it black. Now I do not know what it will do as I only see the roots and those roots will soon be black again. I do find it curios though.

[Kelikea]

there can be a number of factors going on here. But my two top choices would be:
1. As you get older, your blonde can darken, so over the 7 years you have been dying, your natural color has been changing.
2. Sun and elements can naturally bleach your hair. Blonde usually looks darker at the roots, anyway. Since your blonde has been covered up, it has not been exposed to the sun. As it grows out it may naturally lighten back to its original color. I've seen kids who were shut up inside(neglected) have what looked to be brown hair, but when adopted and let outside, their hair lightened to blonde. Ok, that's an extreme example. How about this one: Same thing with wearing a cast. The hair on my arm was almost black when I got my cast off, but now it is back to its light brown with blonde tips.

[Venefica]

That might be it. Thank you for the information. I do like it if it have gotten darker though, it makes it nicer when I dye it black.

[mzBANGBANG]

I started out as a pale blond child. Now, my roots come in a darker medium blond but when the sun hits it, it lightens a whole lot, especially down through the length. I do think my hair got slightly darker as I got older, so that could add to it as well. My dad was blonde all through his 20s and around 30 he turned brunette.

[browneyedsusan]

I'm no expert, but have heard that it's normal for women's hair to darken as they age--until the grays lighten it up again!

My hair was strawberry blonde as a child, straw (damaged beyond belief!) in high school, and ash brown after I had children.

[RitaCeleste]

In my family a child can go from white blond to black as they get older. Only a few of the "blond" kids had a shade of blond as adults. My daughters started as blonds and they will get darker every year. They are light brown, my 14 year old will have the lightest hair. Her sister's may make the full change to deep brown or black in her life. My hair started as strawberry blond, I call my roots dark brown, most would call them black, but if I didn't color the sun and shampoo would lighten it to a medium blah brown color. The darkening of blond hair is so common that many blond girl children are lightening their hair in junior high to keep their "blond" look. My sister did. I sprayed peroxide on hers before a pageant when she was eight to really give her some highlights. She's sworn off dye and let it be brown now. It is common for blond hair to get darker with age in many, many, many cases. It is also common for it to still lighten up and have blond streaks from the sun as it grows out and is exposed to sun and shampoo with ammonia in it and things.

[Theobroma]

Sounds familiar. I was flaxen blond at seven or eight. By twenty I'd darkened to a darkish honey blonde, and it's continued to darken slightly since then to the point where it's now... well, I call it bronze because it changes depending on how the light hits it. At any rate, it isn't at all unusual for blondes to darken over time.

(Come to think of it, my cat did the same thing. Seal-point Siamese, started out with a pale caramel body and ended up almost chocolate-coloured on her back when she was ten or so!)

[Venefica]

What I find so strange is that I did get lighter hair when I was about four, my hair when from light blond to golden blond, but then it have stayed there all through the rest of my childhood, all through my teens and into my beginning twenties when I dyed it. Also the change have happened very quickly, like over the last year for my roots have been golden blond up until a few months ago, and now they are brown. Oh well I guess nature is strange. :D

I generally do not get very sun beached hair as I do not spend allot of time in the sun. I stay in the shade when I am outside and before I dyed my hair I seldom had much sun beaching in my hair even after a whole summer.

[faellen]

I was a dark blonde as a child, and started dyeing my hair in my early teens. I've now stopped dyeing and my natural colour coming in at the roots is like a light ash brown. Definite colour change from when I was younger!

[MegaMystery]

I went from light blonde as a baby/toddler to golden blonde in elementary school to light/medium brown in highschool, i suppose it's normal :)

[MintChocChip]

Yeah it's pretty normal for your hair to get darker over time, especially for blonde's. I agree with Desdesdes though that your roots are probably going to be darker than the lengths would be if all of your hair was virgin, that's what my hair does anyway!

[Mesmerise]

To be honest it seems strange to me too..but I've had a similar kind of experience (although it was when I was a teen).

Mine wasn't about a colour change but when I was younger I had only just to shoulder length straight hair with only the odd kink in it. (I was never allowed to grow it any longer as a child and when it got to that length Mum took me to have it all cut back very short)..but..when I was a teen I wanted a bit more life in my medium/fine straight hair so had a perm (serious disaster and one I never repeated! lol!).
But..when my Mum passed away just before I turned 18 I started to grow my hair and once it got past a couple of inches long it was curling.
When it got to the same length as it had been when I was a child it was very curly and nothing like it had been when I was younger and had reached that length.

I hope you are OK with this change though. :)

My hair also got curlier as I got older... very strange. When I was a child I am sure I had straight hair (or if not dead straight maybe 1b).... but now it's just a big old mess of some wave, some curl, and some virtually straight bits lol.

As for hair getting darker...that is quite common! A lot of people who are blonde as children end up with brown hair as adults. I don't know if there's any specific age where it happens either? I think usually it may happen when you're younger, but there's no reason it absolutely can't happen in your 20s (and remember if you had virgin blonde hair before you went dark, some of the lightness could be due to sun exposure etc which often makes a darker blonde hair much lighter).