Embrace the grey?

You know how sometimes you think out loud? This is me, doing that.  I am considering accepting that my hair is going grey and ditching the dye.  In my head I will have my hair in its current style, which is shoulder length, on basis that short AND grey is definitely going to be ageing, long and grey is going to look sophisticated, quirky and confident.  I may be deluding myself here.

To give you some idea of what I am talking about when I say I am going grey here are some pics.  Please note I decided to take these on the spur of the moment and because they are in bright light so you can see my hair colour I am frowning like buggery, fine lines have become wrinkles!!

Delighted that I actually look like a hard faced man in this one!

Please no one mention the receeding hair line!

I look very much as if I have already embraced this whole grey thing don't I!

Grey eyebrows, god I am DIVINE.

Bet that little lot have made your morning, consider them a gift from me to you - Happy Easter!  

So, lovely ladies, what do you think?  Do I step away from the dye and see what happens or am I deluding myself into thinking its going to look nice?  Has anyone done this, what happened?  Did you feel ancient, did your husband leave you for a much, much younger woman, or did you feel fantastic?  At nearly  46 I think I have finally accepted that I am who I am and I look like I do, it's not beautiful, but it's not hideous either, I am in danger of being comfortable in my own skin! Shock, horror!  Any and all advice greatly appreciated!  Oh and s'cuse the migraine inducing dress, bright innit!

Clairol Perfect 10 Hair colour to dye for

See what I did there? Yep, I am bigging up my own rather pathetic pun, sad really.  Apart from one very long winded and astonishingly scientific hair colouring post right back when this blog was a baby I have never really mentioned colouring my hair.

Which is rather odd as it is something that I do about once every 2 - 3 weeks, quite an oversight in fact!

I have been colouring my hair since I was 14, firstly with Toners (Rich Mahogany) then Glints (Pimento Red) and then I grew up and let the hairdresser do it (caramel, honey and red highlights and light brown base colour) and then when the greys became really persistant I went back to doing it myself at home.  I made the usual mistakes - why does the colour on the box never look like that when its on your head?  After lots of trial and error I bought my first box of Clairol Perfect 10 in Medium Ash Blond last July (in response to a bit of a hair trauma!) and have stuck faithfully to this range pretty much ever since - had a brief flirtation with a mousse home colour, loved the formula not the results.


Over the last 12 months I have had 3 different hairdressers, (yes I am picky and yes I will switch hairdresser the minute you lash up my cut) each one has asked about my colour and each has commented on how great the colour is and what fantastic condition my hair is in, all were surprised to hear that I was using a home colouring kit, kudos Clairol!


I have used Medium Ash Blond and Light Ash blond alternatively, just to prevent my hair getting too samey, I tend to use half the pack for a full head colour or divide it into 3 if I am only doing my roots, so not only does it give great results but it is stupidly inexpensive!  I recently had a dabble with lightest Ash blond which I felt was just too light for me, the greys seemed to dominate and with my pale skin and grey eyes I just felt that I was becoming almost invisible.  I needed a lift so last night nipped to Asda and purchased Dark Blond, plan being I'd get up 10 mins early this morning, slap on the colour whilst I brushed my teeth rinse it off in the shower, job done.


I did manage to get up 10 mins early, stumbled into bathroom and promptly mixed half the tube of conditioner with half the bottle of Activating cream, stirred it for a while trying to work out why it wasn't thickening up and then realised what I had done! Luckily had half the activating creme left so rinsed out the bowl and began again!  New hair colour done and upstairs by 8.15am to start work!

As usual I am really pleased with how this has come out, I think I had been rather sucked into the thinking that the lighter my hair the better, on reflection this darker more neutral shade is much more flattering on me, at least I think it is and response from the fam has been positive!

My hair feels lovely and is really shiny as well.

Think I will be sticking with this dark blond for some time, I really like how it doesnt completely mask your hairs own tones so it looks very natural, not fresh out of the box and this neutral shade is warm enough not to make me look like death!

 If you are thinking of a bit of home colouring I would definately recommend trying Perfect 10, it is one of the few colours I have used where the shade on the box is pretty much what you get on your head, most aren't even in the same colour spectrum, it smells fine, the conditioner is lovely and is the only one from a colour kit that I have actually used between colouring to keep my hair looking good and my hair is in great condition, whats not to love?!

L'Oreal Prelightening Creme - test run

Have felt like a mad scientist all afternoon doing this, been great fun! First of all I cut two swatches of hair.


Then I made up a little of the L'Oreal Prelightening creme. Not as scary as I had thought, there is a bottle of liquid and you add the 2 sachets of powder and the tube of cream, shake and apply. I mixed a little of all three onto a plastic takeaway lid and mixed it with a drinking straw - such a professional!


I also decided to see what would happen if I just applied the Casting Creme Satin Blond semi-permanent to my hair as it is, so I mixed up a dollop using my tried and tested method.


I put a hair swatch in each and made careful note of the time.

Will put Toni & Guy out of business at this rate!

In the meantime I made Emily take some "before" photos for me. Much prefer the back view to the one from the front.


(thank god I decided to switch to smaller photos!) This one does nicely show off the unintentional graduation of hair colour and the nice grey line down my parting though!

After 20 mins I washed the sample that had been dunked in the colour and there was no discernible difference, as I had expected.

I checked the lightened sample at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mins. 60 mins is the maximum time and the results are pretty impressive. If you think orange hair is impressive.


Can you imagine if I was really stupid and had just decided to leave it at that?! Would look like I was supporting the Dutch all the way tomorrow night!


Side note - how come if I was trying to take a photo of my nail it would have been horribly out of focus? What is that all about?


Side by side with original hair colour swatch


Side by side again, this time up against Emilys' left boob - apparently showing them against a black background was vital, for some reason!

So, its orange. Fairly inevitable but doesn't mean it wont scare the bejaysus out of me when I do it for real in a mo!

Luckily I had anticipated that and had selected a Casting Cream colour that deals specifically with the problem of lightened hair looking "too warm" (they mean "orange").

So the poor little hair swatch now gets dunked in a freshly made up dollop of Blond Satin.

And ta-dah!

Blond! Its a really nice darkish beige/blond which looks a bit golden but not really orange.


This time my lovely assistant is Steve - look at the state of those hands!


Now bear in mind the lighter of these two has had an hour dunked in bleach and 20 mins in a colour that also contains hydrogen peroxide and has been rinsed and dried, no conditioner, it is in pretty amazing shape. I am seriously impressed with how soft and shiny it feels and I love the colour.

My only concern is that when I do it on my head it is likely to be very matt, one colour all over and so obviously home dyed, but there's no turning back now. Time to do the deed. Watch this space for the "after" photos...............

(oh god, I am feeling confident. That's GOT to be a bad thing, hasn't it? Wish me luck!)

Post Edit 2 hrs later....
I swear that was the most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life. What I hadn't allowed for was that not all my hair had the permanent colour on, so having gaily slapped on the bleach on tips and ends, leaving for a bit and then working through into roots it quickly became apparent that the re-growth section and the hair that had only had semi-perm colour on it was going to go waaaaaaaaaaay lighter, very, very, very quickly. In the end rinsed the bleach off after 45 mins and then was nearly sick when I looked in the mirror, the roots were totally bleached, no pigment at all, the 3 inches of semi perm had gone very light blond and the rest was orange, really really orange, more orange than the swatch had been and I couldnt leave the bleach on any longer otherwise the top 3 inches were going to be white and the rest orange and the semi-perm Casting Creme wouldnt be able to match it up. Vile moment, hands shaking so much putting on the casting creme and to be honest it was only when it was dry and finish that my heart stopped pounding. It is by no means perfect and I suspect the roots are going to look awful when they start showing, which is likely to be tomorrow! But for now I think I got off lightly - at one point I seriously thought I was going to have to have 6 inches cut off my hair.

Now I need a really, really bloody massive drink, if you will excuse me!
From this:


to this:


Extra Post Edit: Can you hair colour intensify over night? I woke up on Sunday looking like a ginger tom cat - really quite scary marmalade coloured hair. Of course guest house was rammed so had to do breakfast like it but then made rushed trip to Boots, decided on Perfect 10 Medium Ash blond, thank goodness it seems to have worked and has reduced the orange to manageable levels - its chucking it down or I'd do a further photo update. Just shows the quality of stuff these days though, my hair isn't in any worse condition than when I started all this, which is frankly nothing short of a miracle!