Going Brunette to Blonde

For ages I'd wanted to go back to my natural hair colour which is a dark, mousy blonde but I just haven't had the time or the money to go to the hairdressers. Whilst visiting a friend a few days ago we decided that we'd go ahead and do it ourselves.

My hair before was a warm-based brunette, dyed back in July. It was quite a dark brown to start with but the holiday sun lightened it. The below picture is from one week ago.

First up we used the Garnier Belle Colour Pre-Lightener which costs a mere £3.50 per pack. I used two as my hair is quite long and thick. This took my hair to a yellowy-orange colour with platinum blonde roots. I was really quite impressed with how much it lightened my hair as I was expecting it to be a lot more orange.

We then immediately applied an ash blonde colour and a purple toner to calm down the orange and yellow in my hair. I used the Garnier Belle Colour Natural Dark Blonde. This didn't actually take my hair any darker but it did even out the colour from root to tip. My hair was still very yellowy-orange.

The next day I picked up two packs of the Clairol Nice & Easy Medium Ash Blonde. I chose an ash colour to counteract the very warm tones in my hair. I've used Nice & Easy hair colours plenty of times before and they've always done just the job, so I trusted these to get to the correct shade for me. I applied to dry hair and left for 40 minutes, 10 minutes longer than the recommended time as my hair was so light. I rinsed away and applied the conditioner supplied with the dye (does anyone else think that conditioners from hair dye kits are so much better than bottle conditioners?)

To cut a long story short, my hair came out the exact shade I wanted. This is really close to my natural hair colour so I'm absolutely in love with it. I was really impressed with the Belle Colour pre-lightener and Nice & Easy colourant. My hair doesn't feel particularly dry although I'm going to use some super nourishing hair masks for the next few weeks. It was really easy to get an even coverage with the Nice & Easy colourant, as I was pretty paranoid about leaving any yellow patches. So that's me back to my natural colour. I give it 3 months before I dye it again...