HAIR (everything else you want to know)

another unedited picture in natural light.

Last I left you, we'd gotten to a glorious ginger through a couple of sessions at the salon. A couple of weeks later I moved back to my uni town and my hair was all in my own hands.

My first port of call was to visit Sally's as I knew I'd get the best result using professional colour on my hair. The first colour I tried was a level 7 copper, however it turned out really rather lack lustre than the swatch and the colour name promised! I did my roots once more with the same dye as I wanted to be totally sure it wasn't turning out dull due to user error (spoiler alert- for once the problem wasn't me!).

After a brief panic I decided that the best course of action was to strip my colour.

I used colourb4 which I've used several times and had good results with. It doesn't smell great and can make your hair feel a little rougher than usual but it's nothing a little hair mask and a lot of shampoo can't remedy. It turned my hair a rather interesting yellow colour, which looked pretty awful, but was perfect for what I was planning for my next step: arctic fox.

I decided to use arctic fox in cosmic sunshine and sunset orange as it was recommended by the lovely Jemma Wade (whose hair is absolutely divine). it created a really lovely vibrant colour that I was really happy with.

However I was still left with the problem of what permanent colour I could use to dye my roots. I deliberated for several weeks about what colour to use and scoured the internet for reviews, videos and pictures for every ginger hair dye I could find.

I eventually took a bit of a leap of faith and settled on a highlift colour: L'oreal majicontrast in pure copper. I have always used 20vol peroxide due to my fairly light natural colour and have been blown away by the results that I've gotten with this dye. I haven't found it to be too damaging to hair due to only applying it all over my head every once in a while and also due to using a low strength of developer. It lifts my roots perfectly and gives me the delicious tangerine-y dreamy shade of ginger that I so crave.

In order to keep on top on my hair's health I regularly treat my hair with olaplex and am very sparing with heat styling (which also helps to preserve the colour).

I also use arctic fox to dye the lengths of my hair following a root touch up to ensure all of my hair colour flows seamlessly. I also use arctic fox in my shampoo and conditioner which I use every time that I wash in order to infuse colour back in when washing my hair. Admittedly using the dye in my shampoo and conditioner doesn't stop the fade completely but it helps to keep my colour looking fresh in between each root touch up/full head dye.

I hope this has been useful to someone out there! I've got several videos over on my youtube too all about my hair so be sure to check them out for some more hands on advice!

Mabel x