I dyed my hair. At home. It wasn’t a disaster.

I don’t dye my hair all that often (once a year used to be my “thing”), and when my sister-in-law’s were visiting we all wanted to go to the hair salon and get it done together. A hair cut for one, and the other two of us got our hair dyed. As you do in California, I looked up a well-rated hair salon on yelp and noticed a salon that had good reviews that was semi-close by. We drove to Campbell and sat down in the chairs. There were supposed to be 3 stylists doing out hair, but one guy never ended up showing up all together. That was unsettling.

I asked to go a bit darker with my hair, but to have no red in it at all. She showed me some hair swatches and we chatted through it. Once I walked out of the salon, I was pleased with it. I paid an exorbitant amount of money for an overall colour that faded out within 3 months.

I do all things correctly when taking care of dyed hair. Not washing it on the regular, and using colour treated shampoos (Aveda is my favourite). Well, fast forward a few months and I have this faded out reddish colour. I hated it. In the sunlight I had red hair. I have done red all throughout my teenage years and older. I’m sick of it, and now I’m all about embracing a natural brunette colour. No more reds!

I wasn’t about to go back to the salon, especially since the colourist used semi-permanent and not permanent (clearly). You ain’t eatin’ up no more of my money, fool!

Since my brunette roots were showing, I have been noticing an awful lot of greys coming in behind my ears, especially when my hair is in a pony (which is never, so maybe that’s why I hadn’t noticed them). Panic stricken and in a fit of fury I spent a while plucking them all out from behind my ear. I mean, who gets greys in their happiest time of their life? I thought you got greys when you’re stressed out! Well, the greys are starting to stress me out you guys.

I told The Guy to look and confirm I was in fact getting grey hairs, and mentioned to him I was plucking them out. He seemed to notice them and also panicked and told me to NEVER rip them out because apparently hair doesn’t grow back?

What does he know.

It might be true, so instead of continuing to pluck because god that took way too long, I started to do something about it. I feel way too young to have some grey hair man! At least it’s hide-able behind my ears and not on the top of my head. Some members of my family still aren’t grey. Guess I didn’t get those genes. I still hate them (the grey hairs lol).

As luck would have it, I received an Ulta coupon in the mail for a $10 off anything in the store. How convenient. I don’t want to waste my money on any more hair salons, since I never get what I want, why not just dye my hair at home and save me the frustration of throwing away my big dollars to someone who doesn’t listen to what I want anyway? Plus, the gals at Ulta were pretty helpful. Since I had my hair dyed in July (ugh it seems not even that long ago! I hope I don’t become a regular at hair-dying…) I wanted to know if I should do the roots, or the ends first. Luckily tey knew what they were talking about and walked me through the steps.

I even e-mailed my OLD hair dresser back in Waterloo Ontario to ask what colour I “should” dye my hair and what she used to do with it. Staying away from ashy colours is a thing I should listen to as apparently it’ll give my hair this greenish tinge. Could be okay for Christmas, with a red sweater, no?

All jokes aside. A 13.99 Clairol hair colour + $10 coupon = my kinda price range. right up my alley. A before picture.

Here are the after photos!

Not bad for a first time hair dye at home in over ten years, right? I’m pretty pleased with how it came out. There is a smidge of red still in, which I dislike. But overall it’s pretty awesome, and I’m happy with the new colour!