Photo Credit: Marin
From brunette to blonde, blonde to auburn, auburn to jet-black. It can be a blast to change up your look by reinventing your hair! With so many shades and coloring styles to choose from, you’re almost guaranteed to find a color that leaves you and your lovely locks looking gorgeous. However, harsh chemicals and strong ingredients may actually be doing more harm than good.
Damage can be avoided, but first let’s look at how you are dying your hair. By box or salon? Permanent or semi-permanent? All the time or a one time try? These are all factors to consider when waging your cost-benefit risk analysis on the dye job. Let’s start with the basics; the more you dye your hair, the more likely your hair will become damaged. If you try a color once and then let it grow out or fade, your hair will still be strong and healthy. If you are constantly using hair dye with harsh chemicals, you will see the damaging effects. In fact, prolonged periods of coloring treatments can lead to hair thinning. So if you already struggle with thin hair, frequently dying your hair may not be ideal.
Coloring your hair from one shade to another shade in the same color family (light brown to dark brown) will also be more forgiving and less damaging on your hair than going from a dark brown to a bleach blonde. Bleach is extremely harsh on your hair, drying it out and making it feel like straw. It’s rumored that bleach will make your hair actually fall out, but really it just makes hair very easily breakable and severely damaged. If you have bleach damage, you should wait until the problem area grows out and can be cut off before you start to fix the color of your hair. All dye contains some level of hydrogen peroxide, which is a strong chemical. Be sure to check the active ingredients and hydrogen peroxide levels in you dye before you begin, to ensure you won’t be damaging or drying out your hair too much.
When choosing a box or salon dye, you should consider your option to use permanent color or semi permanent color. While there are advantages and disadvantages to both, you need to find what type of dye is best for you. Permanent color’s obvious advantage is that it lasts a very long time. However, since the color does not fade, your roots will start to show sooner and you may have to dye your hair more often. Semi permanent color only lasts for about 12 to 15 washes, and then naturally fades back into your original hair color. While it doesn’t last a long as permanent, this type of dye helps with hiding abrupt root lines. Semi permanent dye is a good choice for someone testing out a color and worried about getting stuck with a shade that they may end up hating in a few days.
Finally, while box dye is much more affordable, salon color is more professional and sometimes safer. If you are extremely serious about a coloring job, you should consider having it done by a professional. Otherwise, act on impulse and change up your color for fun with a box dye.
A new hair color that is rich and shiny is easy to achieve if you’re smart about your choices. Avoid damage and dryness by doing your research, spreading your dye appointments out and not straying too far from your real color.
I’d done a lot of light dying to my hair. Then I paid $200 to have it bleach foiled at a salon. During my visit, I watched the stylist sort of hesitate while taking them out and he had his helper had a short glance between one another. I guess, they new my hair was damaged at that point. But he applied a conditioner and did some blow dry straitening when done. It was nice so far as that one time. Then the top, front, right couple inches of hair broke off about an inch from my head. In other spots maybe 2 inches were there. Anyhow, the hair was a ragged mess. I’m glad it only concerned a couple inches of head space, but that’s just ridiculous. It was probably the bleach on top of dye. But now, I’m afraid of foils. I’m afraid of dye, even though I’d dyed my hair after that. A couple years ago, I grew it out. I swear that small section on the front of my head that had been damaged still frizzes at the ends from time to time. That now hang past my chin. The damaged hair is long gone, but paying $200 at a salon is no guarantee that damage will be avoided. Especially if you already treat your hair chemically.