#i try to trust salons then blonde fuxks up anyway cause blonde is finicky like that

[mejomonster]

Okay so I used clairol advanced gray semi permanent dye for the first time ever. I'm absolutely beyond impressed.

I've used Clairol Jazzed before (the pink one because of course I tried pink) and it lasted 1 fucking wash, 1 fucking day, I was charged like 50 dollars by the salon that put it in and had to redo it myself the day of the wedding when my hair was meant to be pink. So naturally, because of that experience I had avoided ever buying Clairol semi permanent dyes again.

But my hair was bleached to white, lacking any gold tones, and the problem is every "natural color" dye generally is formulated with the expectation you are at LEAST putting the dye on pale banana yellow hair, or light gold hair, since that's how much most people lighten their hair. They don't make most "natural color dye" formulations for fools like me that over processed their poor fucking hair to paper white then accidentally stained them with ash so they're fucking grey ;-; no. No generally there's no fucking dye options to add gold to hair with absolutely no base gold. I usually slap pink, peach, or rose gold into hair when I've fucked up and bleached ALL yellow out of my hair, because pinks add gold back in. Pinks turn your hair pink, then fade to golden blonde. Thankfully. But alas, this time? I added peach and my hair just got silvery/whiter rather than dull grey. It still didnt get enough gold added ;-;

So I go to Sally's, asking if there's anything that will deposit golden tones to hair that's lacking any gold to begin with. Since usually, a natural blonde dye will have some violet or blue (or green if you pick a dark blonde) because the dye is meant to neutralize the slight gold tint hair is when lightening. Natural color dye does not actually get made to be put on paper white (or grey) canvasses of hair. So at Sally's, they suggest GREY COVERAGE dyes. Since natural grey hair also lacks that light Yellow base. Further, they suggest semi permanent so I can mix it with conditioner to control the color outcome better. Finally, they suggest I get both a 6G and a 6N so I can mix a tiny bit of 6N just in case the gold on its own alone (or at least as the overpowering color in 6G) doesn't hit the blue-greyish hair I've got currently and turn swamp colored (the 6N can add some of those ash tones the 6G expects on natural hair so the dye comes out closer to expected).

I do like 20 squirts of my conditioner, 20 squirts of 6G and 6 squirts of 6N. (Beforehand I do a patch test of just 6G, and 6G mixed with 6N. Both turn out golden blonde so I go with mixing both colors so my roots don't get super warm, since my roots aren't grey only the platinum lengths). Turns out: perfect natural looking golden blonde.

I decide to go over it again with just the 6N (neutral) mixed with conditioner (20 squirts conditioner 20 6N dye), because now that there's gold base in my hair I can put a neutral dye in and get a result I expect. I do, it's now a neutral-ashy blonde (but my hair tends to pull ashy quite easily). Since it's semi permanent, it's likely to fade. As long as the gold color clings longer I should be fine (gold generally does hold out longer, since people always complain about brassiness when their toners fade lol). Once it fades? My plan is just continue what I've been doing, shadow roots on myself to blur the growth line, and keeping my lengths some shade of natural looking blonde ToT.

Anyway I'm so fucking impressed with the clairol advanced grey semi permanent line. 1. They work fine on actual grey (or ashy as all hell greenish/bluish hair) 2. They can therefore ADD gold back into hair (or add reds if you fucked up and turned a brown color super ashy). This is great cause very few products can add warmth back in. (Before this, pink dye was literally the only thing I'd ever tried that managed to add gold back in). 3. You can control the light/darkness of the outcome by adding conditioner when mixing, just like if it was a rainbow color like pink. (For example I used 6G and 6N, but with conditioner I lightened them to a level 8 blonde. And for the test strands I did level 9 lightness). It's rare I've seen the ability to control lightness with dyes that come in natural shades. 4. They come out true to color. I got pretty much exactly what was promised on the bottle. The 6G dominant mixture I made gave me a solid Golden Blonde (level 8 with the conditioner mix). The 6N only mixture with conditioner I did later gave me a fairly neutral level 8 blonde (my hair pulled slightly ashy because my bleached hair has less gold than normal hair lol but still overall fairly neutral). I can say the color came out very close to the color of the conditioner mixture, just like if I was using a pink dye. 4. Very even coverage. This is good or bad depending on perspective. The good is I think it would provide good grey coverage by darkening grey hair to the surrounding hair color. The downside is I had an ombre and now its much less noticeable as the lighter hair was darkened... but it's a semi permanent so it'll fade. And the ombre will be clear again later lol.

Anyway, results:

Before dying, you can see it's white with pink bits, and very warm roots:

This is after the 6G, a little 6N, and conditioner mix (for 1 hour):

A much more natural looking color, way more blended. My roots are still a little darker as expected. But the result was a Bit too brassy for my liking in the sun. Still, adding gold was the goal so SUCCESS LOL

After the 6N conditioner mixture, 20 minutes:

In natural lighting, a bit less brassy. A bit more ashy, darkened my lengths a slight bit more. Quite happy with it though, as lengths are still slightly lighter and as it fades I'll preserve my highlights. My roots are still a touch brassy but 1 they're gonna be dyed over with regrowth in a couple months so not a big concern, and 2 it's my lengths over absorbing dye like crazy so like. Once the lengths are looking good, I can fuck with dying the roots whenever. The roots are likely to stay the same shade more or less, as the porous bleached hair fades faster. At least until it heals from enough protein treatments.