Brunette

After much consideration, I've dyed my hair dark again over the weekend! I had almost an inch of dark regrowth above the blonde which looked horrible, so something had to be done. I definitely considered slapping some more bleach on to both fix my roots and try to lift the colour even more, but finally decided against it. While my hair responded amazingly well to DIY lightening and didn't feel even remotely like straw, I just didn't want to risk frying it.

I contemplated dying it a "fun" colour and letting it grow out, but the only colour I'd want is a very light purple - which I figured would probably just look like a botched toning attempt in my amateur hands.

I did some more Googley research into going back dark, and read some horror stories about green and orange catastrophes... the general consensus was for yellowy-bleach blondes to first go bright red, and then medium brown over top of that, so that's what I did.

I let the red (Schwarzkopf Brilliance 37 Hypnotic Red) dry to see what it looked like, as that had been a colour suggestion from my friend Vikkie. But it really doesn't suit me. I think I could make it work with a made up face, but being realistic my hair colour needs to look acceptable with my natural lazy-day flushy cheeks. It really, really did not.

So after giving that look the big thumbs down, I brushed through two boxes of medium brown (Schwarzkopf Live Salon Style 4-1 Medium Brown), waited, rinsed, and followed up with loooads of conditioner. As always with those damn brown hair dyes - it's much, much darker than the pictures on the box, and yet still the red is shining through. But that's okay - far superior to green at least.

So goodbye, blonde. It really was fun while it lasted, but while I definitely don't regret it, I probably won't be doing it again. Unless I can manage to let my natural colour grow to shoulder length - maybe I'll re-evaluate (this is unlikely to happen).