Saturday, November 15, 2014

how to: Get Pastel Hair











One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by my readers is how I have been achieving my pastel pink or purple hair. I couldn’t think of a better way than to write a step by step guide to help you get the same colour I’ve been absolutely LOVING! It’s surprisingly easy, and the results are so beautiful. I always get so many compliments on my lilac, lavender hair, which I’ve had for about 2 months now, and I hope that this guide makes it easy for you to recreate, and that I can answer the questions I’m frequently asked!

Step1: Begin with bleached blonde hair
This is the step that’s going to be a pain for a lot of you, and it’s the step that takes the most time if you’re starting from a dark colour. Unfortunately, you simply can’t go pastel over black or brown hair. For those naturally blonde among you, bleaching won’t take nearly as long, but you have to start with a very light (almost white, ideally) base colour. This is what the colour is going to stick to, and the lighter the hair, the truer the pastel colour going on!

Step2: Tone your hair
Blondes can become brassy over time, but thankfully there’s a heck of a lot of really good, really effective violet toned shampoos which can pretty much sort you out in 15 minutes or less. My ultimate favourite is the Pro:Voke Twice A Week Brightening Violet Toned Shampoo (which I’ve reviewed here) which I lather up and leave on for ten minutes, which leaves my hair looking platinum blonde and revitalised. Not a brassy strand in sight!

Step3: Choose a good dye
My go-to hair dye is the BleachLondon dye in Violet Skies, which I use to get this gorgeous lilac pastel hair. In the past I’ve also used Rose by BleachLondon, which is insanely popular and has loads of reviews online (read my review on Voilet Skies here and Rose here). I’ve also dabbled using Crazy Colour’s dyes, which are also pretty good, and come in a great range of colours. Bleach London is £5 from Boots per bottle, and comes really quickly in the mail. Just make sure you have enough to cover all your hair!

Step4: Apply the dye
There is a method to this madness, and this is how I like to apply my dye, and it’s the way that works for me. Bear in mind I’m rubbish at everything hair-related and I’m certainly not qualified to be doing any of this! I hop in the shower and shampoo my hair twice, to make sure it’s really clean. Then I towel dry it, section it into four sections (two back halves and two front halves) and slather the dye all over the hair. I leave the dye for about half an hour, which is longer than the bottle states but I like the vibrancy of the colour if you leave it on a little longer. I rinse it off in the shower using water only, and I don’t condition my hair at any point during this process as it causes the colour to slide around and fade much quicker. I dry it off to check the colour (if it looks patchy or too light, which it did the first time, I repeated the dye application process, but with practice you get much better at getting every piece of hair!)

Step5: Protect and maintain your colour
I like to use Tresemme Platinum Strength serum (review here) to smooth and nourish my hair, to stop it looking frizzy and dry after skipping the conditioning stage when washing my hair. I very rarely wash my hair when it’s got a temporary colour on it because with each wash, it fades and it is sad, but when I do, I use the Pro:voke toning shampoo. Because of it’s purple pigment, it stops the lilac tones from fading as quickly as they would if I’d just used a normal shampoo. To keep my hair clean, I use a dry shampoo which doesn’t strip colour like traditional washing does, and refreshes my hair beautifully so you can’t even tell I’ve not wet my hair for over a week (eek!)


I hope you found my tips and steps helpful! This is the way I achieve my much loved lavender hair colour, but I followed most of these steps with the Rose dye as well. Hopefully this post answered most of your questions, but if not, feel free to comment or tweet me with your extra questions and I’m more than happy to get back to you!

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