Giving my hair a break.. Going dark..

The day has finally arrived that I have gone darker. I knew one of these days that I would have to do this to my hair, after all the things I have done to it. I have decided to go darker until Spring of this year, to give my hair a bit of a break from the bleach. The perks of having short hair, most of the damaged bleached ends will be chopped off by Spring. I thought I would also share with you guys how it dyed my hair darker. It is not as simple as most people think, so I did some research.

My research

After going a darker shade of blonde a few times, watching countless YouTube videos and reading articles, I have come to the conclusion that if you have really bleached hair you will need a "filler" in your hair before you apply the dye or your hair will turn a muddy greenish colour. I will not go into too much detail about it because I know most people do not really care about the science, they just want to know what they need to do. Basically for hair colour to work on bleached hair you need some golden or reddish colour in your hair first. Most dyes have a green based in them so when you apply it to bleach/white hair it will turn out that muddy colour. Adding golden or reddish colours first will counteract the problem

Products

For a colour filler I chose the Schwarzkopf Live Colour in Champagne. I have a fear of putting anything red in my hair whenever I dyed my hair darker as I am not sure if I will be able to commit to the darker colour. Once the red is in there, it will stay there! You would have to really bleach your hair to get it out and that of course would mean more damage. So go for a champagne/golden colour if you cannot commit. *It will not be as effective as using a copper/red colour but it will neutralise most of the green tones in the dyes. Just use it with your after conditioner, after dyeing the hair to add more gold in the hair.

For the dye or toner, I used Schwarzkopf Professional's Igora Royal in 7 - Blonde. I chose a level 7 because it is borderline dark blonde and light brown. It will not be such a harsh contrast with my natural hair colour and I can go for longer without colouring my hair again.

As for the peroxide I chose Hi Lift 10 vol - 3%. Based on what I have read 10 vol just deposits colour and will not lift my hair/make it lighter, which is perfect because I really did not want to damage my hair even further.

The following are optional but highly recommended. Gloves, an old shirt, hair clips, bowl and brush. Do not forget about your favourite aftercare conditioner too!

What the product have to work it

 The tips of my hair are really bleached, they are almost white and occasionally I will have breakage if I do not take care of my hair. The sun also plays a big part in bleaching the hair. As with natural blondes, the sun will bleach the hair so the hair around my face and parting are always lighter than the rest of my hair.  The hair around the mid-shift is slightly warmer, probably didn't bleach it well enough from the last time. The hair close to the root is a mixture of light brown and my natural hair colour which is almost a black colour. The brown is from hair dyes that I just use to extend my bleaching sessions.

Colour Filling

In the above photo you can see the finished results of the colour filling. The colour filler I used was just a coloured conditioner. I diluted it further with some conditioner and left it in my hair for a bit and then I washed it and blow dried it. As you can see my hair is a slight darker blonde and the ends definitely look like they have more colour in them.

Application

In applying the dye, I made sure I followed the manufacturer's instructions. I left it in for the full 30 minutes so that my hair would really absorb the colour.

The result

Excuse the flattering shot but this is what I got after the whole process. My hair has definitely soaked up a lot of the pigment. As I only did a lot of highlights to my hair, it has given my hair a lot of dimension instead of just being a block of brown/dark dark blonde. I know it is darker than a blonde colour but this is what I kind of wanted as I know that bleached hair does not hold on to colour very well.

Almost 2 weeks later

This is my hair after 3 washes using my regular repairing shampoo and conditioner. As you can see it has definitely faded to a really light golden brown colour. I have since then repeated the steps mentioned above to maintain a darker look to my hair.

Tips for anyone going a darker colour

It will take some maintenance if you really want to commit to the darker colour as it will keep fading until you've really packed the hair dye on top of each other or until you chop it off. Just be patient I suppose because there is really nothing you can do, it will just keep fading but it will start to fade a lot slower the more times you do it.