FOR THAT GINGER-BLONDE TINT

Tips for going ginger blonde and how to maintain the colour

Taken 2017

Dyeing hair can be exciting and also scary, especially if you have 4C hair. There's a high chance of getting dry brittle ends, and major breakage from the drying effects of the treatment. So what made me do it anyway? Simply put, colour is awesome! I love trying out different colours for my braid hairstyles, but this time I wanted my strands to have a different hue whenever I took my braids out. Thus, I decided to go blonde!

Taken 2018

The Process...

I used Clairol's 'Textures & Tones' line for black women in the colour "Lightest Blonde". However, as you have already guessed, I didn't get to the bleach-blonde that I wanted initially. I actually had to dye it twice before it got to this colour! (I waited 2 months before doing the second treatment). I didn't notice any difference in terms of dryness after the first round of the dyeing treatment, but after the second round it became harder to keep my hair moisturized. It would have been faster to just bleach my hair, but I feel like that was going to be too harsh for my hair strands.

To keep my hair flourishing though, I do trims every 2-3 months. The picture to the right shows how much I've cut off and what's remained(Taken in 2018 as opposed to the first picture taken in 2017). I stay away from high heat and always use heat protectant on low heat settings. I moisturize with a leave-in and hydrate with water in between washes, and always make sure I deep condition every wash day. I do protein treatments 2-3 times per year if I can, because some moisturizing products already contain hydrolyzed proteins in them.

If you plan on doing a ginger-blonde, here are my tips:

1. Make sure your ends are healthy. Get a trim if needed.

2. Do a protein treatment a week or two weeks in advance (deep condition immediately after the protein treatment)

3. After the dyeing treatment, deep condition and set with a heavy leave in conditioner like the Cantu coconut leave-in.

4. Depending on how your hair feels after the first treatment, try doing another treatment 2-3 months after the first one to go a shade lighter.

If you try this, let us know how your experience went below, and be sure to DM your pictures to our Instagram (@dee_nice_and_jay_qwelin) for a feature