I have always been a die-hard fan of blonde hair. I was blonde as a child but it slowly darkened, and then years of highlighting means I'm not really 100% sure what my natural colour is now. I went for a year with really dark brown hair, following a spontaneous decision in a hair salon, and that year made it clear to me that I just do not have the face to pull off brunette hair. Here's the evidence....oh. my.
So I've been blonde ever since, and recently it was getting blonder and blonder, following my obsession with wanting white-blonde hair.
My decision to go from half a head of woven highlights to full-on bleach was one that wasn't exactly celebrated by my hairdresser, but she did say my hair was generally quite resilient and thick, so it could take the bleach for a while.
So for the last year or so, this is how my hair has been....
I managed to get it pretty white, with regular bleaching and lots of purple shampoo and toner (!) but you can see from the photo that I only bleached the top of my head. The underneath is all my natural colour and (in my daft little mind anyway) it felt like I wasn't ruining my hair quite as much by keeping the underneath untouched.
By the way, if you want to read any of my reviews on the purple shampoos I used when I was white blonde, then please see here, as I trialled a fair few!!
Anyway...back in October when I had my last bleaching sesh, I noticed my hair generally didn't seem too happy when I left the salon. My head felt sore, my hair seemed really squeaky and 'doll-like' and it was knotting and breaking off so easily. I panicked a bit as I love my hair long and was worried I'd need to cut it all off, so when I next went to the hairdressers (last week) I asked her if I could go back to the highlights.
To cut a long story short, my regular hairdresser is on maternity leave so I had a new one. She was really lovely, but she did say my hair was breaking off quite a bit, and that when it came to bleaching it was the case that your hair will suddenly give and then it will start breaking majorly. So she managed to persuade me to take my colour a bit darker (uh oh...). She recommended the new Wella Illumina range, which is an innovative new hair colour product which gives multi tonal highlights without needing to actually weave in different hair dyes. So no cap, no foils and no 3 hours in the salon chair. It is also meant to protect the cuticle and be gentle on your hair, which I was obviously in desperate need of.
So she persuaded me (mainly by holding up my iddy-biddy bits of broken hair for effect. Poor little hair). And an hour later I left the salon looking like this.....
OK, at this point I'll be honest with you. I cried. I reckon about 90% of you will look at that photo and think "it literally barely looks any different". But that little 10% of you die-hard blondies out there will probably give a little gasp. The white blonde was most definitely gone.
With regard to the Illumina colour though, I was SO impressed by this. My hairdresser literally painted it over my entire hair (including my virginal hair underneath) twisted it into little plaits and left it to develop. I had barely read half of my first magazine and she was back to wash it off!? SO quick. And considerably cheaper too!! My bleaching normally costs me over £100 but this was a snip at £80 and my roots are only going to be £30 next time apparently.
The colour has left my hair really soft already, and you can definitely see the multi tonal highlights. It doesn't show up brilliantly on the photo above, but that's because I had to kill the flash as it wasn't giving a true reflection of the colour.
So genuinely, if you are looking for soft, natural highlights then I 100% recommend the Illumina range.
Also on an aside, both myself and one of my best friends started bleaching our hair at a similar time. She doesn't use straighteners so her hair has coped a lot better with the bleach, but both of us were a bit concerned about how we would 'get our hair back' from the white-ness. I was adamant we'd have to go red-brown like I had to before, but obviously not! So if you were thinking of dabbling in a bit of bleach but were worried about how you come back from it, be heartened that it is actually wayyyy easier than I thought, and you can just take it down to a more natural, darker blonde.
As for my hair...it is still taking a LOT of getting used to. I think some of the problem is my hairdresser used a very warm dark blonde and I'm so used to seeing myself with cold, white blonde hair that it just doesn't seem to go with anything I wear or any of my make-up.
I'm going to see how it lasts but at the moment I'm leaning towards asking her to run some white highlights through at the next appointment. I just want the blonde lifted a bit as it seems a bit drab at the moment. Having said that, my hair is loving the break from the bleach. We'll just have to see what happens when I go on 29th Jan for my next appointment.
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