Blonde to Brunette

I've been a blonde for the last 2.5 or so years of my life. I started with highlights, and eventually opted to dye my hair blonde all over. I'm the type of person who tend to get bored of their hair fairly quickly, so it was most definitely time for a change!

I decided to go with a medium warm brunette shade. In another month or so I'm planning to go darker, but I  didn't want too drastic of a change since I was going from a white blonde shade. That is the first big piece of advice I would give to someone going from blonde to brunette : Go with a lighter shade than you might initially think. It's going to seem darker to you after having light hair, and that way you can avoid the "OMG IT'S BLACK" freak out that too many girls go through. It's easy to darker, but to make it lighter again can be a huge hassle; not to mention super damaging to your hair!

If you're wanting to do this, I highly recommend going to see a professional as it's a lot more complicated than most people think to go from blonde to brunette. But because I know that's not always possible (or if you're the type that likes to do things for themselves) I thought I would run you through what my stylist did!**

All brunettes have some red undertones to them. Some have more than others, which is where you get the variation in shades eg. Warm vs ashy. When you bleach your hair, you're removing all these tones from your hair. So it only makes sense that when you go dark again, you would therefore need to put these tones back into the hair. So we started by adding a red shade into my hair, letting in stay in for about 30 minutes. After that it was rinsed out and shampooed, but not conditioned.

Adding red tones back into the hair

Next we added a neutral brown shade, and repeated the process. I great tip I learnt? Make sure you comb the colour through your hair! This is going to make sure it is evenly distributed and no areas have been missed.

Once the last colour had been rinsed out and she hair shampooed, a cuticle sealer was put onto my hair and I left it on for about 2 hours (while watching the Grey's season premier ;) ). This helps to lock the colour into the hair, making it last longer and preventing any fading. You basically want to leave this on your hair for as long as possible. To finish I just rinsed that out. The cuticle sealer is really conditioning, so you don't need to worry about washing or conditioning the hair after using it.

The last tip I learnt is to not wash the hair after dying it. You want to wait 48-72 hours before washing after you've initially dyed it. This gain helps to ensure the colour is really locked into your hair, preventing fading!

And that's all there is too it! I'll make sure to do an update once I've gone darker. I hope some of you found this helpful, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions :)

**I am not a professional, this is just my explaination of what my stylist did to my hair. Everyone is different, so results might not be the same on your hair!