The whole pastel hair trend was big this summer – and it still is. I would go on Instagram and see girls rock a full head of silver, rose gold, purple, etc. hair and I would try and picture myself with that type of hairstyle. However, I wasn’t confident enough to have my whole head a pastel colour. Also, roots are a bitch to maintain.

So I’ve decided to do a pastel ombré instead. At first, I went to a salon for a hair consult and the rough estimate was about $428CAD for a rose gold ombré. I felt like that was way too much money for hair, especially for someone like me who changes up her hair every three months or so.

I went to Sally’s Beauty Supply store and spent about $50CAD on hair dye and other materials needed for the process like a brush, a bowl and a hair mask for the after math.

A fair warning though, bleaching your hair will damage it tremendously and if you have curls, it’ll ruin it. After bleaching mine, my hair’s texture changed completely.

Here are the products I’ve used:

1. L’Oreal Feria in Midnight (Black Hair Dye)
2. Salon Care Quick Care (Bleach)
3. Salon Care 30 Volume Developer
4. Wella Color Charm in T18 (Toner)
5. Ion Color Brilliance Semi-Permanent Brights Hair Color in Rose
6. Ion Repair Solutions (Hair Mask)

Before I dyed my hair, it was a light ash brown so it was already quite light to begin with. My roots were definitely growing in and I really didn’t want to have to do them every two weeks or so, so I dyed the top half of my head black. But before I did all of that, I bleached it twice, and then toned it with the Wella T18 using a balayage hair technique, that I discovered from Guy Tang – the balayage hair god. Since I wasn’t so sure how the back of my head looked like and how well it blended, I used one of those ridiculous highlight head caps and it worked quite well actually. But I only bleached the bottom half of my head when I used the head cap.

After bleaching the tips, I dyed the top half black and by doing that, it had a soft transitional effect. Then I proceeded to colour my hair with the pink hair dye. I’ve seen tutorials on YouTube and many dilute the dye with conditioner. I did that the first time, but nothing went on my hair. So instead, I didn’t dilute the dye with anything and put it straight on the blonde parts and left it on there for an hour rather than 20 minutes, like what it says on the box. The concentrated mixture worked instead of diluting it in conditioner.

RESULT:

This pink colour comes off after three washes, but I didn’t mind since I didn’t really want it on permanently anyways.

I do plan on adding pink hair dye when I go back to school.

All this colouring did murder my hair. Like I said, it completely changed the texture. What I do is that I use the hair mask after every shower. As for shampoo and conditioner I use Garnier Fructis Damage Eraser and they’re all repairing my hair quite nicely. Since the bleach stripped my hair of my natural oils, after I wash it I use Organix Argan Oil and spray it all over my head.

Because I’ve bleached quite a lot of my hair, I did cut off an inch of it. I didn’t mind since I’ve been planning to cut my hair shorter. This usually happens when you bleach your hair, you’d need to cut off the ends since they get really fried.

I did this because I didn’t want to have to pay quite a lot of money on something I can do myself. Before you bleach your hair or do this type of DIY, do your research! I watched tons of YouTube videos. Another thing, you’d need to trust yourself completely in order to execute this. If you are having second thoughts, have someone else do it for your or if you have the money go to the salon!