I can't wrap my head around why LiLo insists on beating her beautiful red hair to death to make it blonde. It's both an unflattering and unnatural tone on her. I get a lot of questions from my clients about what hair colors look good on them, and the basics remain that cool skin tones are meant for cool colors and the same goes for warm, I want to break down the most common booboos I see, and maybe I can stop you from making them, too.
"I'm going to dye my hair... RED." In high school, I remember seeing two girls who were best friends come to school with the same color of merlot on their hair. I imagined their afternoon the previous day. Walking through CVS... "Oh my god, we should dye our hair!" But why, of all things, that infamous deep red? It has an unexpectedly unflattering effect of washing just about anyone out unless they're super pale or super tan (or Rihanna), and here's why:
Natural red isn't actually
red. It's very, very gold. The red that comes from most box colors has a ton of
blue in it, and that's why it doesn't flatter most people who would naturally be flattered by strawberry hair. It's an incredibly difficult color to achieve (the natural redhead look), and it is possible, but it has almost nothing to do with a box that says "red" on it.
"
I've been getting highlights forever, and that I leave to the professionals. But if I'm just dyeing it back dark, I can totally do that at home." Then what happens? Your hair turns the most unnatural shade of green (not like Ramona up there, but more of a sewer-y tinge). Why? Think of the surface of those strands of hair as a series of open doors that lead to rooms. The rooms are empty for the most part because the hair is blonde. It's what we call porous, like a sponge. The doors are pretty indiscriminate about the fact that they're open, so when you put color inside their little rooms, it washes out just as easily. So the hair residually grabs the easiest pigments to hold -- blue and yellow -- and the rest washes off. So your rich brown is now green. The solution? You have to fill the hair before it will accept "brown." You fill the hair by dyeing it red
first. Then brown on top. Voila! Brown that sticks.
"
My hair is damaged. I've made a mess. I should just put it back to basic black." You can always tell when a girl is fresh out of hair school, because having had all the color products in the world at her disposal for a year or so, she's done just about everything imaginable to it and had to cut it off and dye it dark. I see it all the time, people think black is the neutral tone for starting over. But why? Black is such a polar tone, looking natural on
almost no one. Plus, the pigments in that crow color are almost as damaging and drying to the hair as bleach. And then you're forced to deal with the project of pulling black out when you want to look like yourself again. If you're concerned about what you did with bleach and other things, just have someone dye it back to your root color and leave it alone. Extremes are extreme.
"
If I'm gonna go blonde, I wanna be blonde." Hey girl, I get it. I loved being blonde, and you can be super-blonde as long as you know what tones to stay with. The girls with the milky complexion can shoot for a pearl blonde set of tones, and when they get low-lights they should play with cool violets and titaniums. But if you're like me, I don't care how blonde you get, you have to keep the tone values warm or you'll look like you're wearing a hat. When your hair color doesn't agree with your skin it just has a foreign look to it, much like Lindsay's. Also, decide beforehand if you're going for a blonde that might occur naturally or a synthetic-looking blonde. Both have their appeal, but if you want one, make sure you're not getting the other. In other words, if it's highlights you're aiming for, make sure your stylist isn't putting bleach on your scalp.
I hope these tips helped save you from a spell of worry and hair-repair. You can do in a few hours enough damage that it could take years to get back to normal. I don't take the chemicals in hair color lightly because I know what they're capable of. Make sure you always consult with someone (we have a column to Ask A Stylist if you want more from
Lovelyish) and make an educated decision. We don't all have a team of stylists like Lady Gaga to just install hair when we need it!
Also, do disregard any implication of "bad hair" in the images. (Snooki is among the few people who can actually wear that color.) I have nothing against any of these people, they're just light-hearted visual aids. :)Have you made these or any other mysterious hair stumbles? How did you remedy them?
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Comments (51)
Hair is hair. If you want to do something, do it. Because it grows back, or it can be cut, one.
I've never died my hair, but I'm young and it's just started getting really noticeably gray. Knowing I have to dye it soon, especially after reading this post, kinda freaks me out.
I've been dyeing my hair for about a year now, and the color I usually do is a dark auburn. I've noticed that after a while the brown washes out but the red stays, and when I say the red stays, it STAYS. For some reason red hair dye loves my hair and wants to have babies with it. I just dyed my hair darker than I usually do and I'm hoping more of the brown stays with this color, because when I have red paired with my natural color (mouse brown) it ends up looking really weird.
I've actually heard that red is one of the harder colors to get to stay, so is my hair just weird, or is it normal?
I know someone in one of my labs that could use this advice. She's dyed it all the colors of the rainbow, then bleached it to platinum blonde. Now her hair just looks like a white tumbleweed lol.
I just let my hairdresser do my color and highlightes, but I like changing it around and playing with color. I use products to protect and moisturize your hair. Like everything, it's about moderation.
I say do whatever the hell you want with your hair and rock it. I've been dying my hair black pretty much consistently since early high school. It's just "me" now. I don't care if it doesn't look natural, it's not supposed to.
I liked being super fake red. It sucked to constantly recolor.
How does that girl on Victorious do it, is what I want to know.
@SoftVoiceThatWhispersLies@xanga - amen.
I am the queen of bad hair. My hair has been every shade of the rainbow - luckily being super pale with reddish hair to begin with, my red phase in high school was one of my more flattering periods, ha.
But I learned that hair is only fun when you take risks with it. I've had friends cut my hair, strangers cut my hair, I've gone from red to black to blonde in frighteningly short periods of time, and I've had a few different hair cuts from wearing it long and straight down to my butt to shaving it into a Chelsea. I have had PLENTY of awkward hair days/weeks/months, but I like that. I can rock awkward way better than I can rock boring :)
(But I have boring mom hair right now until I find the time to do silly things with my hair again after having a baby. Sigh.)
I dyed my hair dark, but i want to go back to my natural color eventually....what is the best way? I think I'll have to just dye it blond first (there is some kind of color in box that makes your hair blond no matter how dark it is)....then I'll dye it back to my natural color (dark blond)
Is there an easier way to go from dark brown to dark blond??
i've dyed my hair but i don't do it myself so it's never gotten so bad that it was literally breaking off but bc my hair is so dry anyways, i have a ton of split ends.
@valeriebeth04@xanga - It's a tough call, but what I suggest to my clients is to start by using a really intensive clarifier like Redken's Cleansing Cream for 6 weeks before trying to either highlight or lighten the hair. You're right that it won't accept a lighter color without prelightening, but the lightener (bleach) won't have to be as strong or left on for as long if you use the cleansing cream to pull the extra pigment out beforehand. If you used a demipermanent, it might fade out all on its own. But the good news is that even if you just get it close to your natural dark blonde with highlights or prelightening and toning, your hair will still look fine as it grows out. It doesn't have to match totally perfectly to just camouflage new growth :)
That was actually very informative. :) It makes me want leave dying my hair to the professionals though.
As someone born a natural blonde that became medium brown & dyed her hair red, blonde, pink, purple & black....I think it depends on what you use. Now if you want to go from one extreme to another, then I would suggest going to a pro to avoid going bald or something.
The one time I can say I made a hair mistake was the first time. The color was gorgeous but the formula was damaging to my hair. But as @SoftVoiceThatWhispersLies@xanga - says, it can be grown back or cut. In my case, I just cut it & it came back fine since I did highlights. Once I worked out what brands worked best with relaxed hair, there was no stopping me! I'm a dyehard now! XD
Snookie looks like her hair is stained with blood. O.o
This seems very...angry. Like, there is literally nothing to do with hair that this girl doesn't like. I've done self hair care since I was 12, and my hair is very healthy. It was black for years and suited me well (http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/xrainicidex/100_2552.jpg), and now it's red and suits me even better (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/304818_10150455793564498_589344497_10705089_6400593_n.jpg). <--Although my roots were bad there. Maybe it's because I fall into that pale category- but srsly. So much hate in this post. I was expecting styling tips...but I feel like most of this is b/s.
i actually like that shade of red D:
Moral of the story...Just go to a freaking hair dresser. My hair was so screwed up from doing it by myself and I spent $100 to chop it all off and dye it a nice color. I feel confident about it for the first time in years.
@thepsychoticraccoon@xanga - I also have mouse brown hair and it's impossible to get red out of it.
Actually Snookie might have been able to pull it off it the red hadn't been poorly placed or perhaps simply poorly styled in that photo.
If you can't manage to portray what you are verbally saying with accurate images I wouldn't let you touch my hair even if you offered it free. Especially if I judged your work by your profile picture.In actuality I don't let anyone cut or color my hair, I've managed to teach myself which ended up working far better than trusting "stylist".@raedium@xanga - the red does so much more for you.
I've dyed, styled and cut my own hair since I was eighteen (I'm 23 now) and I've had nothing but compliments about my hair. It costs me £5 on average for a bottle of a hair dye...compared to £70 at a salon. I'm not paying that much money to dye my hair when I live on a part-time, minimum wage job. A lot of these "don'ts" are based on opinion", rather than fact. People can do what they want with their hair, and like the first commenter said, if you don't like it, it grows out, or you can cut it off, or you can re-dye it. It's not the end of the world if it goes wrong. It's not like it's a tattoo.
@thepsychoticraccoon@xanga - the reason the red stays on your hair isn't the type of hair you'd have, but it's the RED. It washes out BUT the red tone stays... try more of an ashy brown, it could work (with ashy brown i mean a color where is no red undertone...like this)
I had my hair of all different colors, even fiery red and deep red, but because i wash my hair every day i knew it woulden't stay, i colored them to brown. What happened was my hair were, well, weird. Now, after 3 months, i'm blonde. I had to bleach them but hey, they grow back.
@thepsychoticraccoon@xanga - Your just lucky :( I wish my hair was like that! I think red looks best on me but it always comes out of my hair SOOO fast...
I'll never forget my hair disaster when I bought hair that I thought was red and it was more of an orangeish I pulled it off though in Junior high I had balls. Never again will I buy hair without looking in the bag.