this is my second post in my hair series. if you missed my first one, go here. in this post i’m going to go over the process of going from brown hair to the platinum white that i’m at right now. it was sort of a lengthy process – there’s no quick way to do it if you don’t want your hair to fall out. so! let’s start from the beginning. this is how i got platinum white hair – i’m warning you, this may be a really lengthy post.
natural hair
so this is what my hair looks like naturally – it’s a pretty light soft brown color. in the summer it gets SUPER light. so that’s important to know! there are obv a million different shades of brown hair, but the lighter the shade, the quicker and easier it is to go blonde. you don’t have to cut through so much dark color. these pictures are also super old, like high school. but i haven’t fully had my natural hair color all over since then, so i had to dig up a few oldies.
hi jen! 🙂
red hair phase
for about 2-3ish years, i started dying my hair super dark. either black or dark brown. it was mostly box dye so it would always fade out after 6 months or so. after i moved back to my hometown, i started working at a hair salon for about a year. so i decided to dye my hair red because, well, why not? haha
it was SUPER red (i promise, all of this information is relevant)
i’m pretty sure this was back in like 2013? maybe 2014? i can’t remember.
back to my roots
so i had red hair for about 3 months? it wasn’t very long. but then i decided i wanted to work my way back to my natural hair color. so we dyed it to a dark brown to try and cover up the red. the red would NOT come out of my hair, it was honestly really stressful. so what i did was just stop dying my hair all together – even if that meant my hair had a red tint to it for a while.
i didn’t dye my hair for two whole years. all of the red had grown out, except for like the bottom inch or so of my hair. but it was really healthy! again, it’s super important to have healthy hair if you’re going to bleach it all (my last blog post).
i don’t really have a ton of photos of the process and i’m really regretting it right now, so i’m sorry!
but this is what it looked like right before i dyed it – basically back to my natural color. it wasn’t as bright as it was before because it hadn’t been in the sun very much. i grew it out mostly through fall and winter.
time for bleach
ok! so i went to the hair salon and i was like “hey! dye my hair white please” and so the process began. i had never been to this hair salon before but they had a pretty good website and instagram with hair transformations. the first session, she bleached my entire head and the toned it – that’s really all i know. im not not sure which type of toner she used or anything because i wasn’t near a mirror when she was toning it. this is what it ended up looking like.
as you can see, the ends were still a little dark – this was because i had a tiny bit of dye at the very end. i honestly could have just cut that inch off, but it cost like an extra $30, so i actually ended up having my boyfriend cut my hair, hahah.no joke. and he did an awesome job! surprisingly. i really don’t have many photos at all because i HATED my hair. i hated how yellow it was, sooooooo much. it was so CLOSE to being as white as i wanted, but it needed to be bleached one last time.
overall, i just wasn’t super happy with that salon. their prices were extremely high and i just didn’t feel like they understood what i wanted (even though i showed them photos). so i looked for another salon to help me tone it to the color i wanted. it’s a long story but that didn’t work out either, hahaha.
after spending a million dollars and wasting a ton of time on salons that didn’t work out, i finally found the right one!
we ended up bleaching my entire head again – this was about 6 weeks after my initial first bleach. i waited the appropriate time so my hair wouldn’t fry off. so i bleached it, waited 6 weeks, and then went back (after i found the right place) for it to be bleached entirely again – to get rid of any leftover yellow.
after she bleached my whole head, she toned it with a purple based toner. this was to combat the yellow.
she left the toner in a bit long and it turned my hair purple. but not to worry! toner isn’t permanent. i washed it once with a normal shampoo that strips the color – don’t use a color protecting shampoo if this happens to you because it won’t strip the toner. anyway, with the toner it turned my hair pretty grey/silver.
see the purple toner – this was literally the morning after i got it done.
this was also getting really close to the pure white platinum i wanted (and have). SO about 6 weeks after this, i went back one last time. this time she bleached the ends and my roots again. the middle section did not need to be bleached again. the toner she used this time was blue. and this made my hair pure white! like SO white. i wish i knew what the name of it was, so i could tell you, but it was awesome. i was so so so happy with my hair after that.
finally white
so it took about 2x of bleaching my entire head and a few toning sessions with that to get it platinum white. i would say it was a total of 3 months to get it where i wanted it to be. of course, this whole time i was using a purple shampoo and only washing my hair once a week  to keep it healthy.
and here’s what my hair looks like now! of course if you follow me on instagram, you basically see it on the daily.
anyway! that was the entire process. if you’ve read this entire blog, thank you! lol i know it was an extremely long one. if you have any questions or are thinking about doing it, leave them in the comments below or shoot me a message on instagram or something!
i’ll catch you this weekend hopefully for my weekly update/post. i’m sorry i didn’t do that on sunday! i was home for a wedding and was super busy over the weekend and then i’ve been extremely sick the last few days.
here are like two photos from the wedding – my dress is from revolve and i tried super hard to find it on their website, but it must be sold out. i went to order it a few months ago, and it sold out super fast, so i had to pre-order it and then it sold out like two days after my pre-order shipped, so i’m very sorry! i also suck at taking photos when i’m busy like that lol maybe i’ll do a blog post on this dress next week or something.
don’t mind my squinty allergy eyes.
ok this post is long enough, bye!
xo,
courtney raf
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