Whether or not blondes have more fun, as it turns out, is more about how any particular blonde question perceives life and the world, and her corresponding attitude. Still, there are always a huge number of non-blondes who are making the coloring leap at any given time. Going blonde can be a fun way to discover another side of your personality, and you will enjoy the responses you get from people–those you know, and those you don’t. Before you proceed in any blonding process, know what you are getting into and make sure you follow the hard and fast rules, if you hope to produce any shade of true blonde, with no orange, green or purple undertones or worse,-overtones! Most of the average blonde fails produce brassy, bright yellow and a poorly bleached look. You don’t have to suffer these consequences, if you do it right.

Details to Know
A change to blonde comes with the need for a plan: if you hope to keep the color for more than a month or so, you’ll need to re-blonde your roots at some point, between 4-8 weeks. This will cost, whether you buy it and do it yourself or you have it done by a professional salon color stylist. Even if you decide to return to your “natural” color, it will be a while before that is truly possible, as you’ll have to rely on chemical colorants to provide your previous, uncolored hair color until you have enough new growth to style your way. This means that if you’ve been growing your hair out for a couple of years and you go blonde, your present long hair will never again be its natural color, as only the new growth–another 2-4 years–will be your real color. Hair that has not been previously color treated will tend to respond to the bleach/blonde results much quicker.

Know What You Want
There are more shades of blonde than you could even imagine, with cool and warm shades. Not every shade complements every skin tone. It’s best to have your blonding done by a color professional who can show you color samples and compare. Discuss options that exist between going lighter all over with one single color, or multicolored highlights. Lighter shades of hair can look extremely blonde with only highlighting. Darker colors of hair will require lightening your natural color all over before you perform highlighting. Keep in mind that the process you choose will influence the timing of your future maintenance appointments, with the further the treatments take you from your natural color, the more frequent the maintenance visits will need to be. The hair shades on the darker end of the spectrum will most likely find that the initial visit will only go so far, with follow-up processing visits necessary to become light enough.

  • Reds: Dark red and auburn hair shades typically will need around three appointments, while true redheads often can become blonde with highlights only, and in one or two appointments. It’s always easy to go lighter, so try going slowly, and over the subsequent visits you can always add lighter highlights to become blonder.
  • Browns: Could take around three visits, with the base being lightened on the first visit, and then adding highlights at the next visit(s.) Again, it’s better to go slowly, than to do too much at any one visit.
  • Dark Browns/Blacks: First, know that women with true black hair don’t always look better as blondes, and all dark shades of hair should begin with the darker blonde shades, to be safe. For darker hair a minimum of four appointments is needed to avoid hair damage from over processing. And learn to embrace the popular “dark roots” trend, or going blonde will drive you crazy and to the poor house, too.