coloring your hair?? HELP

now that Julianne is here- I can touch up or highlight my hair again.

I have sholder length dark brown hari- seems to get darker all the time except in the summer it finally lightens up to light brown/auburn highlights...

What I used to do is get a soft blond highlight....but after a year or so I got tired of it....and the girl who did my hair ( in her home) was great, reasonable, but 'whited out' my ends so that they were SOOOOO blond....and contrasted way too much with my natural hair- almost looked black and white.

Now with a child, I do not want something that I'm going to have to maintain every 2-3 weeks....better off w/ a process I can do every 6-8 weeks.
And now I cant afford/don't want to spend the $75 to $100 to have it done professionally....

Used to use 'castings' which washes out after 6-8 shampoos....but didnt really lighten the hair.

Any suggestions?

Would like to do this TODAY while my MIL is with me.....need to cover these grays!

Any non permanent hair coloring will not lighten your hair. It doesnt have the chemicals to do that..

You can pretty much only go darker with those kinds of dyes..

There are alot of Hairdyes over the counter you can buy, but speaking from experience its probably not a good idea if your hair is that dark.

Even if you went to a colorist for the first time and then asked him what you can buy to upkeep. There are specialty stores that you can buy better stuff that the salons sell instead of the boxed kind, which will really not give you the best color, and even tell you what the base is..

(i went to beauty school!! LOL)

If you want to avoid any upkeep - go to a salon and have your hair dyed back to your natural color and leave it that way. IMO, bottlejobs dont look very good when done on hair that is sensitive to the sun.

I have similiar hair (Brown but gets blond in the sun) and i have mulitple shades of color in my hair, so a bottle job is too unpredictable/blotchy to work right because it changes the colors of all the hair differently. THe only thing that works well is professional highlights which get expensive after a while.

I completely envy girls who have mostly one color hair (like my MOH) because they can get an $8 bottle of color and voila - a cool new color that looks normal.

at the beginning of summer ( I think) and she pretty much dyed the my hair- esp =the ends...to match my natural color...maybe a 1/2 shjade lighter.
So now at this point...everything but 1/2 inch up from the bottom is a medium to dark brown...and the ends have a slight reddish tint ( which I like)

So, I am guessing that my only hope is to get a permenant hair color change done by a pro...argh!
unless, I want to stick with this dark brown hair..that drains the color from my already pale complexion. (sometimes mother nature is not kind)

ARGH
if I get a permenat hair color change by a colorist- doesnt that need to be maintained every 4-6 weeks depending on how fast my hair grows??

If so, we are talking mega bucks here- cuz they charge me extra for long hair...since it is slightly past shoulder length.
i guess I am stuck...which stinks!!!..until the dummer when I can spray in some lemon juice and let the sun do its' magic.

So much for trying to perk myself up a bit...

Guess I am having one of those blue days....

Phyl, cheer up!!!
My hair looks pretty uniform in winter, but I get reddish tints in the summer from the sun. Henna usually just lightens it and adds reddish shade... But as I said, you'll have to redo it every 6 weeks or so. Henna tends to fade, so if you don't redo it, your hair will just fade back to the normal color.

Its worth trying...

Why would you have to maintain it if they jsut dye it back to your natural color? Then when your hair grows back, there will be nothing to maintain since its all one color.

It shouldnt cost that much - a single process dye shouldnt cost more than $40 every 6-8 weeks.

PS: If the hair at your ends has a reddish tint, it may be that the hair is too dry/damaged to reflect color properly. So a hair cut is probably in order.

If you like the red, how about going back to your natural with a red colorance over it, then you would only have to get the colorance done when you go, and thats only like 30.00 or you can go get the colorance yourself and do it..

Hope that helps a little

The store I used to buy it in closed down, however if you call up salon distributors sometimes they sell directly to the customer..

its def cheaper to do it yourself..

like there is Merit Beauty Supply in west hempstead, (they are the makers of terax!)

There is also a beaty supply and school located in freeport/merrick (its right on the border) on sunrise hwy, right next to the peir one imports shopping ctr.. i have been meaning to call them also..

Phyl,
I just want to say that I know how you feel!! I have natural blah brown hair but its been varying shades of blonde for at least 15 years. Now that we are TTC I am concerned with whats going to happen with my roots and gray! The other day I just dyed mine a smokey dark ash blonde (looks light brown), but don't know how long it will stay like this before the light blonde pieces start coming through. I was thinking of doing a reverse frosting and adding some darker brown pieces so maybe my roots won't look so bad when I get pg. I'm also very pale so my natural brown color looks terrible on me! I know this really doesn't answer your question, but I just had to vent!

i have ALREADy doen the die thing to bring it back to its natural color- that was done aroudn summertime...so now it is all its natural color except for about 1/2 inch from ends where it as a bit of a reddish tinge....

But now Im bored with my natural color and feel it is a bit too dark for me...and was looking to lighten it myself...but NOT with a process I have to maintain every 4-6 weeks...since I wont have that time to myslef too often with my little one...

sorry if I was vague...

is that a brand name of a hair product or a process- haha I guess you can tell how familiar I am with this stuff.....

and I heard to NEVER use sun in sinc ethat is almost like straight peroxide...

i used sun in once, a long time ago, and it made my hair orange!

Colorance is by goldwell (im almost 99% sure)