20 things I learned on the road to blonde!

Hairdressers can be so bad for your hair!  The worst thing a hairdresser ever did to my hair was to tell me that I could never be blonde.  The word "can't" is like a red rag to a bull to me.  Of course I waited until my life was falling to pieces around me and my white roots were 4 inches long (don't ask, there are pictures, I will kill to keep them private) to take the plunge and do it myself.

Here is what I learned. This information is all my own experience with my particular hair.  If you do this to your hair you may well melt all of your hair off.  You have been warned. I am not a licenced professional (at least not at anything to do with hair) and this post should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

1. You cannot lighten hair with colour.
2. The word lighten is a nice way for hair colourists to say BLEACH.
3. If you are a dark brown with 20 years of dark brown colour on your hair the colour you will go when you "lighten" your hair the first 3 times will be various shades of crusty the clown "blorange".
4. That will not be pretty.
5. Do not answer the front door for a few weeks and use up any holiday time you have coming to you to avoid having to wear a woolly hat at work in July (see picture above).
6. There is such a thing as a colour remover.  It will result in similar red/blorange tones but will be kinder to your hair.
7. You will still need to bleach it.
8. Bleach works the opposite way to colour in terms of development.  So bleach the roots last as the heat from your scalp accelerates the rate at which your hair lightens and your roots will go bright yellow first before the rest of your orange bonce is done.
9. Never use heat in conjunction with bleach.  Ever.  Seriously.
10. Invest in Olaplex and learn how it is used.  It is hair insurance but a cut is still inevitable.
11. Sell your hair straighteners.  They will only melt your lovely blonde hair.
12. Have a plan for how the hell you are going to tone it, because dark hair NEVER ends up a pretty shade of blonde.
13. A toner is a colour applied with a lower lever of developer (eg 10 volume) which changes the "tone" of the hair.
14. Brassy yellow hair tones can be vanquished with a purple or blue toner depending on the shade you want to end up.
15. You cannot be precious about your hair and do this.  You just cannot.  It will be awful for several months.
16. Don't become Yellow-rexic. There's no way back from that.
17. Have an exit plan for when you get sick of being too blonde.  If you go too light you will have bleached all the protein, keratin and pigment out of your hair and you will have trouble going any bit darker at all because hair that light just will not hold colour.
18. Research pre pigmentation for the way back.
19. Pray at that point that the whole sombre smudge root look stays fashionable for long enough to get a professional to throw some low lights into it.
20. Get up out of the chair of any hair professional that tells you any of the above "can't be done".