Trying to go blonde

So the last few times I touched up my roots I’ve noticed that the color didn’t take quite as well, leaving a markedly distinct band where the hair is lighter closer to the scalp. The last few times I did root touchups I did it on damp hair, thinking it wouldn’t matter. Perhaps it does matter after all. I was told yesterday by one professional that it really does matter.

Anyhow, because of the lighter band of hair, I decided to deal with it not by darkening the area near the roots to correct it, but to try to lift the color on the remaining part of my hair to match the lighter color.

Went to the beauty store yesterday and got two things: A color remover from Satin (Developlus) and their High Lift 12HLB which is a bluish-blond that cancels orangish overtones in hair when lifting.

It was really fortuitous that I got the 12HLB almost on instinct as I’ll explain below.

I got the color remover almost as a last-second afterthought when I was at the beauty store. I just happened to see it on the shelf and thought – hmm maybe.

After I got home and decided to use it. I’m glad I did. The color remover is quite gentle and non-damaging. Its not a strong chemical. The best way to apply it is to brush it on with a hair coloring brush and then work it in. Put on a shower cap and leave it for 20 minutes. Then you have to wash, wash, wash and rinse a really loooong time and wash, wash more. The chemical only shrinks the color molecules in the hair shaft but the actual process of extensively washing and rinsing repeatedly is what gets the color out.

After going through that process twice my hair was quite orange. It was actually a really cool color of orange that I liked and matched well with my skin. It was not too orangish for me, but still it was really orange.

This morning I decided to go natural and try to lift the hair even lighter. This is where the 12HLB came in handy – it is the right high lift color to neutralize oranges.. So I applied the 12HLB using 40 developer and did a lift treatment. Again using the brush to judiciously apply the product to the darkest areas first and really work it in.

It did neutralize the orange to a much more natural shade, but my hair is still around a 8 or 9GC.

I will wait a few days for my hair to calm down a bit and then do another lift treatment, probably with 12HLA and 40 developer.

I wonder though how light the lifting will really take my hair though? I would really like to get close to platinum blonde and it seems like bleach might ultimately be the only way. I’m really leery of using bleach on my hair because its so thin to begin with and it might just destroy the curl. Perhaps I can test a little area to see what happens.

So as of now I’m planning on doing at least one more lift – which is so much less harmful than bleaching – and being patient – but also investigating bleaching and what product(s) I might use if I were to do so.

I found a good article at cosmopolitan.com 5 Things Your Stylist Doesn’t Tell You Before Bleaching Your Hair. Some of the info is kind of obvious – obviously a radical change in hair color is going to change the complexion and potentially cause major shifts to colors that one uses for cosmetics and in one’s wardrobe. I actually think that part of it would be really fun. It would be so cool to shift one’s look based on a new appearance.

On that note I also like the idea of going lighter with hair in the Fall as it is now, with all the Fall colors in season and the approaching Winter colors (although I’m not too keen on actual Christmas/holiday colors specifically – more of the darker fall colors as really cool contrasts with lighter hair – then again Christmas/holiday colors might be a cool challenge to deal with too).

The changes they mention in the article to hair are what is really interesting and important to think about. I don’t like the idea that bleaching seems to be essentially a destructive process. But we’ll see – will keep investigating…

One final note – for reading up on Satin products – for some reason their domain is down – I had to use the Wayback Machine to view their site.