Fair warning: 17 min read on the entire process of becoming blonde

I had been flirting with the idea of going blond again for a few years. Luckily, my hairdresser replaced a mere idea with a very clear vision for me. I let her do what she does best and I have not been happier with my appearance in ages.

It all started when I asked Sandy Nault, a brilliant home-based hair studio owner ( www.crazybeautifulhairstudio.com ) to give me several haircuts and hairdos for my back-to-back photoshoots 7 months ago. I explained to her my plan, she offered me a few possible options and then we shook hands – metaphorically. During the discussion, Sandy boldly presented her vision for me.

At that time, it was the polar opposite of what I was emotionally ready for.

I liked it. I liked it very much. But somehow the mere thought about being as courageous as Linda Evangelista, the most stunning model of the 90s and beyond, made me feel like I was reaching excessively high. Like I didn’t have the right face and like I was overly ambitious and unrealistic. Plain and simple, who am I to compare myself to Linda Evangelista for crying out loud?

I have been sporting long strands of my naturally cool dark blond hair for decades; practically since my mid-twenties. I had no reason and, at times, no extra budget to change my hair colour dramatically and maintain it afterwards. (I explain the cost closer to the end.) Practicality always won. Our girls attended a semi-private school since preschool. Then there were various extracurricular activities of a significant cost and they have become a regular guest in our monthly budget for years. Besides, I much preferred nice new skis for all of us and a family trip to the mountains instead. In addition, when you are a mother, you know how it often is – you always prioritize everyone else but yourself.

I wasn’t neglecting my looks – god forbid; however, 9 times out of 10 I put my hair in a low(er) bun or a ponytail. Every now and then I thought: Why do I bother with long hair if I never truly enjoy it, unless we go out (almost never) or we take pictures (a few times a year)? In addition, my husband, just like millions of others, likes the idea of a wife with a long hair. Biology at its finest.

Whenever I merely suggested aloud that I would like to cut my hair short, there came various pleas and requests and puppy dog eyes. This always cemented my belief that my darling husband of 20 odd years likes me just as I am and that was it.

I was in the process of creating a masterclass on how to select your perfect haircut considering all 11 (I know!) criteria. I had several haircuts over the course of 7 months. I myself, made minor alterations each time and documented the process. Before the final set of pictures, I wanted to make the last minor change in my then haircut to prove how only a little change of less than an inch (2.5 cm) can make a huge difference.

This time, I wanted to put the final step into the hands of a pro. Pronto. I wanted only minor 1/2-inch alteration here and there, after all. What could go wrong?

I booked a quick appointment on a whim in a nearby studio within 5 minutes from my house.

Big.

HUGE!

I have written another blog post on the topic, so none of you, my dear readers and clients, will ever make the same mistake. You can peruse the details here. 

Needless to say, at that point in time, that my appointment with a ‘pro’ had resulted in an unexpected but complete disaster. Without a smidge of exaggeration, I had never looked worse in my life.

Long story short, after three and a half weeks of debating whether I should
a) just let my hair grow during winter (I’ll wear a hat outside anyway) and postpone my final photoshoot and, consequently, my masterclass launch or
b) admit the infidelity to Sandy and tell her that it didn’t mean anything and I was thinking about her all the time, especially after the massacre

I made a decision.

I booked a consultation with Sandy. She was understanding, supportive and overall her charming self. After about 10 minutes of talking with Sandy, it was clear that the disaster has to be corrected… with scissors. …which meant short hair.

Gulp!

There was no other way around it.

After 25 years and 45 minutes I had a short haircut again.

And it looked fabulous!

As I mentioned earlier, Sandy and I had discussed going blond and short a la Linda Evangelista. Based on my then positive reaction, Sandy suggested to bleach and tone my hair blond and cutting it in the same appointment. I declined. I needed time to process the new hair length first. I realized that I couldn’t expose my nervous system to another shock in such a short time despite knowing that this change was going to be a positive one. Going short and going blond within a few hours was too much. At least I thought it was.

Happy with my new haircut, I booked a hair colour appointment for 7 weeks after. Yay! I’ll be blonde in mere 7 weeks! Meanwhile I will adjust my mindset for the upcoming change.

I went home, had a good look in the mirror and I realized that Sandy was right, once again. My new chic haircut needed a chic colour. Without it and without any makeup, I looked just like a boring shorthaired middle-aged woman with graying ashy hair pretending this is her best look, it was her choice and she feels tantalizing. Well, I wasn’t. Feeling that.

In detail, my always-thin eyebrows (hello life-long anemia!) became paler over time and I needed to use a dark taupe eyebrow pencil every time I went out, not to scare the public. I looked like a girl with a dragon tattoo 25 years later without makeup. Honestly, the very light eyebrow didn’t offer much support to my darkish ashy hair.

Furthermore, my eye colour is blue gray (gray being the key word); my eyes are the opposite of bright – blurry, no thick clear limbal rings, no pearly white sclera, no luscious eyelashes – rather the opposite. To sum up, my facial features do not feature anything except for my prominent nose. If it wasn’t for the blow-dry, I would be a hot iron for any casting director – the very definition of a fifteen century malnourished imprisoned witch.

My natural colouring is cool, soft and muted. Very muted. The voice inside my head started screaming: It is not me! I won’t be silenced! My outward appearance didn’t match my inner self. At all. I looked ordinary but I felt the polar opposite.

My mindset was reset in about 2 minutes instead of 7 weeks. I immediately texted Sandy and booked the ‘going blond’ 2.5 hour appointment for the next day, since she had mentioned she had a cancellation and could get me in.

(A special note for over sensitive postmodern members of the society: the few paragraphs above do not convey a message of low self-image, are not a promotion of low self-esteem, and in no form imply that middle-aged women (of my specific natural colouring) are unappealing or plain ugly. I merely shared my observations of my own appearance in colour terms and my related thoughts. Taking offence while reading this part is your own decision.)

Here is what happened after I came the next day:

First, Sandy seated me by the window, gently put bleach on my scalp, starting with the roots, then all over my hair and covered it with a transparent plastic shower cap. The heat accumulated under it assures that the bleaching process will reach all my hair equally. Without the cap, the natural body heat would bleach mostly the roots because they are the warmest.

Sandy said it would take an hour for the bleach to complete its mission. That was something I was not prepared for. I knew that my going-blond appointment will be long but somehow I expected that it would be more eventful. It was, but in the second part.

In the first 30 minutes from when we started, I examined every product on the shelf, every picture on the wall and then watched another hairdresser, Mallory, cut another client’s hair. Then I felt like exercising. I stretched my legs while still in the chair and wiggled by ankles like you do on a plane. Later on, I stood up behind the chair, held it as a ballet bar and worked on my glutes.

The advantage of being in a home based studio is that there is no big crowd thinking of me as a weirdo for lifting my legs behind me and to the side, 20 times each, both ways. No. There were only five people thinking of me as a weirdo and that is an amount I can live with.

Sandy came to check on my hair several times during those first 60 minutes and she always expressed satisfaction. It looked like my hair behaved as expected. What was actually happening in this phase was the process of removing the pigment from my hair. If you imagine a hair as a transparent straw, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, in my case naturally filled with light brown (or dark blond) pigment, the bleach was sucking out the natural pigment out of it. Yummy!

The natural pigment in our hair is called melanin. You can also find it in your skin and in your eyes. In hair, there are two main kinds of melanin: Eumelanin and Pheomelanin.

Eumelanin is brown, Pheomelanin is red.

Eumelanin is the type of hair pigment that
a) dark haired
b) light brown haired
and
c) blond people have.

Pheomelanin is the type that red and gold haired people have.

There are two kinds of Eumelanin – black-brown and light brown.

Most of us have a mix of two of the three types of hair melanin.

Naturally dark and cool brown haired people have a great deal of black-brown Eumelanin. (Viola Davis, Tyra Banks, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez)

As per natural blondes, both light blonds (Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Cynthia Nixon, Olivia Wilde, Amy Adams, Julia Roberts)

and dark blonds (where I belong, despite appearances, as well as Scarlett Johansson, Britney Spears, Kate Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Deneuve) have a great deal of light brown Eumelanin and less or no black-brown Eumelanin.

Red haired people of various types from Dark Auburn to Orange to Strawberry Blond have more Pheomelanin and less Light Blond Eumelanin.

Auburn haired people (Julianne Moore, Lindsay Lohan, Michael Fasbinder, Tom Hiddleston, Nicole Kidmann, Katherine Hepburn) tend to have more Pheomelanin and a bit of black-brown Eumelanin

whereas typical red haired people (like Ed Sheeran, Ewan McGregor, Isla Fisher, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard, Damian Lewis)

have more Pheomelanin and a bit of light brown Eumelanin

Now let’s see what happens when these three main melanin groups decide to go blond:

Before we do, here is a little bit of trivia to have a better mental image of the hair situation around the world.
1. Black Brown Eumelanin – naturally dark brown haired people, about 83 % of the population live mostly in Africa, Asia, Americas, and southern Europe
2. Light Brown Eumelanin – naturally light brown haired people, about 12% of the population, and blonde-haired people both dark blond and light blond, about 2% of the population live mostly in Europe
3. Pheomelanin – naturally red haired people both dark red Auburn to strawberry blond, about 2-3% of the population, live mostly in Scotland, Ireland, England and Northern Europe

The graph illustrated the theorethical part of the bleaching process. There are several factors you need to consider when you make the decision to go blond.

1.While Eumelanin is easier to remove or lift, as hairdressers say, Pheomelanin is more stubborn. 

2. Because we all are unique, it is rarely just one type of melanin in our hair. It’s most likely two, sometimes all three. Almost all of us have some percentage of Pheomelanin in our hair. For that reason, two dark haired people can go through the same process and end up with different colour results during their initial appointment.

“Even if you have only 1% of red pigment in your hair, you will see some orange, or yellow in your bleached hair at first,” Sandy specified. “Your graph is very descriptive. I’ll use it for when I explain the process to my clients. Some people go through the bleaching process and end up with red hair at first, some turn yellow blond, while others don’t get past Auburn at first. It’s unpredictable.”

3. Going very light blond from hair colours other than light blond typically takes more than one appointment. Sometimes up to three, if you have a very specific tone in mind. Therefore, expecting that the colour magic will happen all at once is rather urealistic. By the same token, it’s not fair to blame the hairdresser when you don’t see your desired tone after the first appointment. 

What is actually happening is a two phase process:

A. Bleach will lift your (natural) pigment from your hair first and then B. a toner will colour in (so to speak) empty hair with no pigment.

Because my natural melanin is mostly Light Brown Eumelanin, the bleach managed to remove it in those 60 minutes.

Alright, the hypothetical straw was now empty.

Sandy moved me to another chair where she washed the bleach out of my hair and then put a shampoo cocktail on it for another 10 minutes.
After that, she washed my hair again and graced it with a post colouring treatment for 5 minutes.
Hair wash again and then a very light blond toner with a hint of violet (only about 3%) to make sure I wasn’t a yellow blond because my beige skin would issue a diplomatic note and simply look pale and sickly. Sandy warned me that this part ‘might have a bite to it’. If I had any unpleasant tingling or stinging feelings, I shouldn’t be a hero, and let her know immediately. Should this tingling or stinging happen, it would mean that my skin was irritated, in which case Sandy would wash the toner out of my hair instantly, to prevent skin damage, you know, blisters and such.

Luckily, I didn’t feel a thing, so the toner stayed in my hair for about 12 minutes.
Another wash.
Finally, after a very nicely smelling shampoo an equally pleasantly scented conditioner sealed the deal.

With all that, my reward came – a warm towel covered my entire scull and I felt like I was in heaven. I can honestly say that out of all those 160 minutes that the appointment lasted, that one hot towel minute was my absolute favourite. I don’t know what kind of magic creates that warm humid bliss but I could use some of it at home about twice a day – every day. Sandy said that she has a special towel- warming machine for it and that I was lucky, because the warm moist towels are at their prime at the end of the day.

Therefore, if you secretly come to visit your hairdresser mostly for the spa towel part of your hair appointment, book the last slot of the day.

I was escorted back to the chair and then the usual hair drying / styling ritual started.

First the heat protector, followed by the volume gel. After the blow-drying process, Sandy applied a root volume powder into my hair. It smells heavenly and always does the job, so I bought it. I always buy the products Sandy uses for two reasons:
1. They are so good that my hair looks vogue photoshoot ready for days after I leave her studio (, which cannot be said about my own handiwork in between appointments)
2. Being an occasional optimist, I believe that if I can re-create at least 30% of her magic with them, I’ll be golden. Well, platinum that is.

As I was paying for becoming legally blonde, I asked Sandy to include the products in my bill, which amounted to over $300, with a tip. I hesitated with the conditioner only because I normally don’t use it but Sandy said: “Oh, you do want to use a conditioner, Karolina. Your hair has been through a lot.” She emphasized the ‘a lot’ part, which made me feel momentarily guilty about hurting my darling hair ‘a lot’, so I bought it with a strong intention to use it as instructed. In truth, I have never regretted following her advice. In truth, during the bleaching process not only did melanin left the realm of my hair but protein and oil went with it.

Note: The maintenance instructions are closer to the end of this blog post.

I booked my next appointment 7 weeks from now, during which the whole procedure will happen again, unless we decide to experiment and go for a balayage style instead of a full bleach and tone, as we did (, well Sandy did,) this time. If I do decide to have balayage, it will mean that my roots will be darker but without the skunk line, that Madonna popularized in the 2000s.

During the next appointment, I will get the bleach only on my regrowth, we will skip the shampoo cocktail because the colour is now secured and the rest will be a routine – post colouring treatment, toner, shampoo and conditioner.

I asked Sandy if the fact that I had a haircut before the colouring was the right way to go, she said that it was actually ideal. Whether my hair was cut or not it doesn’t influence the colour result but it makes the colour appointment shorter.

I also asked if going a single colour instead of balayage the first time was better, and she said yes, because even if I get balayage next time, I will have seen both and decide what I prefer on my third colour appointment. You never know unless you try.

My initial hesitance about going blonde was also related to the maintenance of my new hair – on my part. I am, or used to be, a wash-n-go type of a woman. A 10 minute avocado oil and rosemary oil massage first, then wash and out of the bathroom. No conditioner because my hair doesn’t tangle in a bob. Just a volumizing gel and that’s it. No blow-dry, no hot rollers, no straightener. I hate working with my arms up for half an hour.

I thought it would be worse, but Sandy said that from now on I should do the following 2-3 times weekly:

1. regular shampoo

1a. purple shampoo – only every third time, leave it on for 1-3 minutes and wash off

2. conditioner – leave it on for 30 seconds or longer

3. heat protector – only if I blow-dry or straighten my hair (My heat protector is for dryhair so I can take this step whenever I decide to use hot tools after my hair is dry.)

4. volume gel – helps tremendously

5. monoi oil – formulated for dry, frizzy, and chemically treated hair – love it

6. blow dry – optional

7. matte styling powder for thin hair – this really works! It creates lightweight volume and smells heavenly.

All the 1-3 products I use from now on are Wella – a German brand with HQ in Geneva, Switzerland, owned by KKR, an US global investment company.
Volumizing gel is Sojourn made by a US company with headquarters in Oregon.
Styling powder KEUNE Blend is designed in Amsterdam, Holland. KEUNE is the biggest family owned hair cosmetics company in the world.

I am mentioning the products for two reasons. Firstly, as most women age, their hair gets thinner and they have less of it. To maintain an appealing look thin hair need a product or two for styling. I explain all this here. Secondly, I like to support smaller independent brands not owned by huge corporations. At the same time, I prefer to use the same products my hairdresser is using to increase the probability of recreating the same styling quality, which is always a hassle for me. Sandy used to use Sojourn before, but has now switched to Wella and so have I.

Note: I am not affiliated with any of the mentioned brands. I gain nothing from mentioning any business in this post and I pay a full price for all products and services.

Let’s sum it up.

Sandy mentioned that I would need a touch up every 7-8 weeks. The balayage costs about $200 (more or less, based on the studio) in my neck of the woods. I’ll have about 6 – 7 appointments a year, which will cost me about $1200 – $1400 annually. Plus the cost of a haircut each time I come, of course.

These numbers are good to know before your embark on your becoming (balayage) blond journey. When I was platinum the first time around, I just finished university and I had very little to no money. My sister paid for both of my initial appointments. I was a strawberry blond after the first one, for about two weeks and then I was a bone fide platinum blond after the second appointment.

It was the 90s. I don’t know if my natural hair colour was different/darker then or if hair dyeing technology was still in huggies where I lived then. Anyway, I moved to a different country and I couldn’t afford hair maintenance of that level. I tried DIY. Didn’t go well. Don’t ask. Lesson learned. I swore that I would never attempt to dye my hair by myself. Never did.

This time I was ready to embark on a journey.

After days between the horrible haircut and going blond, not only was I super happy about my new, relatively short, but exciting haircut, but I was mostly elated about being very light blond, again. 3 decades later. If I hadn’t tried it in my twenties, I wouldn’t be so eager for this hair colour change. I do need time to process my decisions and contemplate before I say ‘let’s do it!’. Not this time. I came in with an ashy brown beveled bob and left as a blond beauty ready to conquer the world (beauty is just a figure of speech to alliterate, don’t panic).

Well, now the potentially hard part – coming home as a new woman.

Given how infuriated I was after I came home with the horrible haircut (The one I mentioned at the beginning – the one that went so wrong because I didn’t know the hairdresser and I still don’t know what possessed me to trust her with my hair. The one when I was swearing like a sailor in every language I could remember, while using a wide variety of unrepeatable adjectives, array of nouns interwoven with expressive verbs. Yeah, that one. The memorable one.), my husband didn’t know what he should get ready for in case it went wrong this time. He did hide the knives though.

My people knew I would be blonde, they saw the three blond photographs from my mid-twenties but seeing such a change in real life was a completely different experience for them. My extremely talkative husband was quiet for a great deal of the evening. Real shocker! From the moment I got out of the car, a huge grin has not left his face – for days, actually. He said “Oh my God, you look so different! I’ll have to get used to the new you now.” about 30 seconds later: “I have a new wife!” Then two minutes after: “She really is a first class stylist.” (He was referring to Sandy’s skill and indirectly comparing the Marianne Trench deep difference between the horrible haircut and Sandy’s newest creation.)

Generally, everybody mentioned God in my presence all of a sudden, so I have acquired a feeling that I may have become some sort of deity of our household. They were smiling like mad, looking at my hair from every angle, and they all couldn’t stop touching it. As tired and sleepy as we were, we took a few pictures to capture it. They don’t do justice neither to the colour nor to the style. Like I said, we were exhausted.

Everybody loved it. They still do. The first thing my younger daughter said: “I can’t wait to curl it!” She is my beauty buddy.

In the following few days the smiles and hair touching didn’t stop. My husband has become even more attentive than he usually is. He was obsessed, really. I felt like a new (very attractive) team member in an office full of single young people. Interesting what a hair colour change can do for a long-term relationship.

The reason I chose this particular hair colour was prosaic – I didn’t want to be a witch. Or look like one. There is going grey graciously, and there was my natural colouring suggesting that I was standing in the wrong line for it. Hiding the fact that my hair is graying was the last on the list of my concerns. I am not scared of aging, so far. I wouldn’t mind being naturally white right now but seeing my genetic pool, I knew that this would not be happening to me unless I live for much longer than statistically anticipated. About 50-80 years longer.

With this hair colour choice, I wanted to come as close to white as chemically possible. I mentioned the reasons at the beginning – soft muted natural colouring. However, guess what happened after I turned platinum blond? My gray blue eyes stood out all of a sudden, my skin is lighter, and the fine lines are far less visible. I don’t have to wear a bright red lipstick and fake eyelashes to have a noticeable face, my light thin eyebrows look very natural – as if they were meant to match blond hair and my nose is just fine – covered in natural beige human leather looking just as before.

I always dress practically when visiting a hairdresser – a white V-neck T-shirt and a black cardigan for easy manipulation, if needed. This time I was wearing my fuchsia V-neck cashmere sweater that was way too bright for the previous witchy colouring. I couldn’t wait to see how the sweater would match my new blond hair.

OMG!

Loved it! Super ultra-flattering. I am no longer a soft muted summer deep with a medium to high contrast. I am a bona fide light summer going into light winter. Hello, light and bright cool colours! Hello, blues! I cannot wait to wear you all.

If you guessed that a new hair colour changes your colour palette, you guessed right. At this age, the middle age, I would recommend to reassess your colour palette at least every 5 years, if you go grey naturally, and definitely right after your dramatic hair colour change. There has been a noticeable shift in my colour palette. How many more blues I can wear now and look resplendent! The same goes for blue-based reds and blue-based pinks. Yay!

This wasn’t the case before. The ashy hair was in the way. Blues were good on me, but never great. Never stunning. Never made me feel like me. Dark True Red was my best colour and I wore it often and with pleasure and confidence, knowing that it was complimenting my hair, face, as well as my eyes, even though with red near my face my eyes tent to look more grey than blue.

Now, it’s reversed. I have finally become a blue-eyed blond! And I could not be happier.

To sum up, if you feel that me sharing my inner thoughts, feelings and the entire dramatic hair colour change experience with you has pushed you off the fence you were sitting on for decades, go for it, girl. Reward yourself. Now you know what to expect in every step of the way. And, if you still hesitate because your partner keeps telling you that he loves you just as you are, allow me to share what came out of my husband after about three days: “It’s like having an affair without hurting anyone.”