My hair transformation

I hadn’t coloured my hair since before my wedding. As a result, I had a few inches of mousey-brown hair riddled with greys, followed by many more inches of a warmish sort of brown that had grown out from my previous dye-job.

I definitely needed a change.

For a while I had wanted a balayage (a technique for highlighting hair in which the dye is painted on in such a way as to create a graduated, natural-looking effect) from brunette to blonde. However I was put off by the high cost, and the potential upkeep.

But then I thought – ‘fuck it’ (sorry mum and dad if you’re reading).

So I went to a salon around the corner from my work, owned by Charles Worthington. The prices were pretty steep – but they weren’t far out from my usual salon in Medway. The only difference was that in Medway I would pay for the Director stylist what I was going to pay for a graduate stylist in London. I figured that such a strong brand would probably train decent hairdressers, so I gave it a go.

Before

I snapped this cheeky shot while my stylist was mixing my hair dye. I was a bit embarrassed, hence the weird face!

During

When my hair came out of the foils, had been toned, treated, cut and mostly dried, it was looking distinctly ‘warm’ (aka ginger) to me. In theory this isn’t an issue, I adore ginger hair. But it wasn’t what I’d gone in for, and when you’re paying £200 for a style, you have to be happy with it.

So I told the *lovely* stylist that I really would have liked it to be blonder, so she offered to run some lighter bits through it, tone it again to take out the warmth and try once more. It was already 8pm so I felt kinda guilty, but off we went!

After

The next time we dry it all up I’m 100% happier with it, and absolutely love the lighter blonde look she has achieved. I took the pics with my front and back camera, so the colours and quite different in both -I’d say it’s between the two – but it still has a gingery tone to it.

However, apart from some dryness (my poor hair), it feels amazing and I love having such a different look to anything I’ve had before. It’s still not quite what I was hoping for (I’d have preferred a darker root colour, but my stylist rightly advised that this would look much worse growing out), but ultimately I’m delighted!

In case you’re curious, this treatment should have cost me £195:

• £130 for the balayage
• £45 for the hair cut
• £20 for L’Oreal Smartbond treatment (L’Oreal’s version of Olaplex – which ‘maximises the strength of hair by reconnecting broken disulphide sulphur bonds in the hair’)

However, whilst I was live-posting the whole thing on FB, a friend mentioned she was getting her hair cut in the same salon the next week. I mentioned it in passing to my stylist, who said my friend and I could both get 20% off if she ‘referred’ me. We did this, and I saved 20% off my cut! Wohooooo!

So let me know what you think of the new blonde tresses – and share your own hair transformations with me  🙂