From brunette to blonde, blonde to auburn, auburn to jet-black. It can be a blast to change up your look by reinventing your hair! With a variety of shades and coloring styles to choose from, you’re almost guaranteed to find a color that leaves you and your lovely locks looking gorgeous. However, harsh chemicals and strong ingredients may actually be doing more harm than good.
Damage can be avoided, but first, let’s look at how you are dying your hair. By box or salon? Permanent or semi-permanent? All the time or a one time try? These are all factors to consider when waging your cost-benefit risk analysis on the dye job. Let’s start with the basics; the more you dye your hair, the more likely your hair will become damaged. If you try a color once and then let it grow out or fade, your hair will still be strong and healthy. If you are constantly using hair dye with harsh chemicals, you will see the damaging effects. In fact, prolonged periods of coloring treatments can lead to hair thinning. So if you already struggle with thin hair, frequently dying your hair may not be ideal.
Coloring your hair from one shade to another shade in the same color family (light brown to dark brown) will also be more forgiving and less damaging to your hair than going from a dark brown to a bleach blonde. Bleach is extremely harsh on your hair, drying it out and making it feel like straw. It’s rumored that bleach will make your hair actually fall out, but really it just makes hair very easily breakable and severely damaged. If you have bleach damage, you should wait until the problem area grows out and can be cut off before you start to fix the color of your hair. All dye contains some level of hydrogen peroxide, which is a strong chemical. Be sure to check the active ingredients and hydrogen peroxide levels in your dye before you begin, to ensure you won’t be damaging or drying out your hair too much.
When choosing a box or salon dye, you should consider your option to use permanent color or semi-permanent color. While there are advantages and disadvantages to both, you need to find what type of dye is best for you. Permanent color’s obvious advantage is that it lasts a very long time. However, since the color does not fade, your roots will start to show sooner and you may have to dye your hair more often. Semi-permanent color only lasts for about 12 to 15 washes, and then naturally fades back into your original hair color. While it doesn’t last a long as permanent, this type of dye helps with hiding abrupt root lines. Semi-permanent dye is a good choice for someone testing out a color and worried about getting stuck with a shade that they may end up hating in a few days.
Finally, while box dye is much more affordable, salon color is more professional and sometimes safer. If you are extremely serious about a coloring job, you should consider having it done by a professional. Otherwise, act on impulse and change up your color for fun with a box dye.
A new hair color that is rich and shiny is easy to achieve if you’re smart about your choices. Avoid damage and dryness by doing your research, spreading your dye appointments out and not straying too far from your real color.