My Colour Journey

Journey is definitely the right word for what I went through to get to this final product. Let me preface that going from virgin dark, dark brown hair to a grey-ish steely blue is not a simple task. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do it, because you-do-you girl, but there are a couple of different factors that you have to be comfortable with before diving head first into the change.

In my last hair post, I had mentioned that I have had long hair for over 10 years. Last year I cut it short for the very first time and the feeling of maintaining short hair was crazily liberating. I adored the minimal amount of time it took me to wash, dry and curl my hair that I didn’t want to go back to the waist-long length that I had before. How in the world did I ever manage hair that long?!

I’d say that my relationship with my hair stylists parallels those of my significant others. I trust them to do justice to my hair and to bring my vision to life. When all goes wrong, all of the trust goes out the window and it can’t ever be regained. It’s like being cheated on. I’ve had my fair share of bad haircuts, so going this short was extremely nerve wracking. A thousand thoughts were going through my head at the same time,

“What if it’s too short?”

“What if the cut doesn’t suit my face shape?”

“What if it doesn’t style well?”

Yes, all very superficial questions, but when you’re cutting you’re hair that short, you’re not exactly leaving much room to make up for if something goes wrong. So obviously I had to take a couple of selfies to document my long locks before they got all chopped off.

Before going into my appointment, I spent the entire week surfing Instagram looking for inspirational haircut photos. I wanted to make sure that the individual cutting my hair would be able to visualize exactly what I had in mind and not have to play guessing games with my descriptions.

Luckily, I got my hair cut by the Creative Director at Civello, Dylan Sit, and through years of experience, she concurred that that’s exactly how everyone who wants a haircut should describe their preferred style. We talked at length about how industry and common day lingo can be quite different and phrases that you learn from a magazine can mean a very different thing to a stylist. I may have gone overboard and saved almost 60 photos to show Dylan because she only had to look at 3-5 to completely get the look that I was going for.

I held my breathe and gripped the arms of the chair as she went ahead and snipped off 5 inches of my hair.

Released from the blades of the scissors (this was just the initial cut in preparation of my hair being coloured), I was brought to the second floor of the salon where all of the colour magic occurs. There I met Vanessa Bianchi, Grand Master Colourist (don’t take her title lightly, I swear her hands work some serious magic), and we talked shop.

I already knew that the whole process would be quite lengthy. Having had a couple of friends who went through a similar process, I was prepared to spend the day at the salon. Six plus hours wasn’t a deterrent but Vanessa made sure that I knew what I was getting myself into. We estimated a rough 9 hours (I was booked in from 10 AM till 7PM), and looking back, the whole process took exactly that long. You can tell how experienced someone is by how accurate their estimates are.

I explained to Vanessa that I loved how an ombre looked on me, but wanted to play around with colour as opposed to just lightening my ends. I settled on a platinum ombré base with a grey-ish steely blue colour that would fade nicely over time with easy maintenance.

Even though I have had my hair bleached in the past, this was the first time I would ever go this light – and I was nervous. I was scared that my hair wouldn’t strip colour well, I was scared that it would come out too brassy, I was scared that there would be too much breakage. Going into my appointment, I was scared at everything. But looking back, I didn’t need to be. The amazingly attentive team at Civello took care of all of my needs (including my midday caffeine craving) and so much more.

After what felt like an eternity (it’s my fault for having a lot of hair), I was officially fit to join the aliens on Mars! I had a head full of foil and product that weighed about an extra 5 lbs. I was told to sit in the lounge for 30 minutes for the bleach to process – to which I succeeded in beating a couple of levels in Two Dots.

My hair took pretty well to the first round of bleaching. You can see the drastic difference and contrast between my virgin hair and the processed hair. Mind you the leftover product makes it appear lighter than it did after everything was washed out. I was a little shocked by how blonde I was and instantly felt unsure of the process, but Vanessa reassured me that this was only one step in my colour journey.

Bleached hair is extremely fragile and should be handled with care. We had plans to put my hair through a second round of bleaching without much recovery time in between, so my hair was given a treatment to repair it as much as it could within the short time frame.

I was treated to a lovely head massage that almost had me asleep by the end of it. If I could pay someone to massage my head the way they did at Civello, I would – on the daily. There’s something so therapeutic about having someone rub your scalp that I wouldn’t mind shelling out the dough to have it done on the regular.

After my hair was towel-dried, I was brought back to the first floor to finally get it cut into the shape that I wanted. Dylan looked over the photos that I had saved one final time before going to town on my hair.

I had requested for long bob (also known as a lob) that hovered in between the space of my chin and shoulders. I really love curling my hair, and didn’t want the shape to turn into a bob the minute it morphed into the slightest of waves. I wanted enough length to it so that it would remain a lob however I styled my hair.

Another important factor was how the ends of my hair laid down. I don’t have thick hair, but I have a lot of hair. And to make matters worse, it’s stick straight. Now I know a lot of people would kill for straight hair, but when you’re getting lobs/bobs or anything with a blunter cut, you risk the chance of having a triangular shaped head. The ends all fall on top of each other, spreading out and creating a base wider than the top of your head and you  look all kinds of silly. If a geometric shape is the look you’re going after, then I’d recommend that you leave it there.

For me, I wanted a more flat look that didn’t cause flippy ends and Dylan recommended that I layer the bottom just the slightest so that it would be more of a choppy blunt cut. This would help everything flow together and ensure that my head would never morph into a triangle. I agreed and she began cutting.

After another 3-4 inches were lost (if you’re counting, we’re almost at 10 inches of hair gone here), I could see my hair start to take shape. We decided to leave the front portion of my hair slightly longer than the back so that the strands would frame my face and add some length to my square jaw.

We added a slight curl to some of the front sections to help envision what my hair would look like after being styled, and we both agreed that it was at a good length. Not wanting to risk cutting too much off, we decided that it was time that I head back upstairs for the second and final round of bleaching.

After another 30 minutes of bleach application followed by a 30 minute processing, we washed out the product to yield a warm platinum glow. A protein treatment was applied to my hair during the wash to restore it’s vitality before I was treated to another head massage. At this point, I was at my most relaxed after already having spent close to 6 hours at the salon.

I’ve never once in my life wanted to go blonde, but after see the results of 2 sessions of bleaching, I was a little bit sold on the look. I was tempted to tell Vanessa to stop there and to let me walk out with my bleached locks (partly because I was starting to get a little antsy having spent so long in the salon), but I reminded myself that I was there to push my personal boundaries and to go blue. Afterall, once the colour fades, I can pursue the blonde again.

We blew it out to get it ready for the blue dye and I was once again tempted to leave it as is.

I had decided to go for a rootier look for the growth to blend easily into the colour with slightly easier maintenance. But the bleach had to be applied far up enough my strands in order for the colour to adhere to my hair, so Vanessa whipped up 2 different formulas to better help blend the blue into my hair.

First up was a richer dark blue that was to be applied to my roots. This would help blend out my roots to the bleached hair, creating a gradient of dark to light blue going downwards.

Once she was finished covering my roots in the dark dye, she went over all of the ends with a lighter shade that would not only deposit blue to my strands, but some grey as well. I had wanted a slightly metallic blue and she achieved just that. If you’re a colourist attempting to achieve the same look, make sure to check out Vanessa’s Instagram as she’ll be posting the formula that she created on there.

The process of colouring my hair blue required that my hair be spun and put up into buns that replicated Sailor Moon’s meatball head. Not only do I get to emulate Sailor Mercury with the finished product, but I got to spend a few minutes as Sailor Moon! Three cheers for reliving my favourite childhood memories!

After the dye was washed out, we went straight to blow-drying it to see the resulting colour. It came out a little darker than I had expected but I couldn’t have felt happier. I was over the moon impressed with the work that Vanessa and Dylan had performed on my hair and felt like it had been given a second life.

I honestly didn’t think that my hair would take well to the blue, and was unsure if it would work well with my skintone, but everything came out perfectly. I’m in love with how streaky the colour is, making it appear a little bit more natural (regardless of how unnatural blue hair may be), and was wildly impressed with how multi-dimensional the colour looked after my hair was curled.

Though you may think that my journey ends there – it doesn’t. Colour maintenance is a whole other story that I’ll be sharing with you just so you know what you’ll be getting yourself into if you’re considering going this drastic of a colour change.

And if you do, make sure to book an appointment with Civello using LUSTLISTT35 to get 35% off of your services! All the details to my promo code can be found in my previous hair post. Have an awesome weekend!