Taking Care of your blonde hair is challenging. To get it the perfect buttery #blonde your color professional sometimes has to use heat, lighteners, and you may sit for hours. After the final rinse and a perfect blowout you leave feeling like a million bucks! A few weeks later those roots start coming in, maybe a few greys and it's time to do it all over again. How can you stay super blonde and still have healthy beautiful hair?
First off, you need to choose the right colorist. A true professional uses the most gentle means possible to get you where you want to be. It could be foils, it could be balayage, what's important is what goes on your hair, and honestly they know better then you. Take the time to have a consultation with a few colorists, but once you feel comfortable with someone enough to let them do your color, you need to sit back and let them do their thing.
Listen to them. In addition to knowing the products, they have taste. They will recommend the amount of lightness and the tone of blonde that makes you look young and beautiful! Why not listen? Styles change, and as you age the same kind of blonde might not make you look as good as it did in your twenties. Similarly, your hair changes throughout your lifetime, so your color has to change. So many people ask to be more blonde then they need, we can do it, but you're only doing more damage to your hair. Youthful hair is healthy and shiny, so trust your professional.
Don't ask for a gloss! Sometimes you need a gloss, and your colorist wouldn't do it if you didn't need it, but don't insist on it. Despite what you may have been told a gloss/toner/glaze is a chemical service. If you need more shine, reconsider your home care and get a treatment. If they recommend a conditioning treatment, DO IT! Again, this is what they do. It is not in their best interest to recommend something you don't need, so if they are telling you you need it, it's because it's their job to maintain the integrity of your hair. Do ask for Olaplex. It's a small add-on but these days almost every salon offers Olaplaex which is not a conditioning treatment but a bond builder. To put it plainly it prevents breakage. Lots of companies are trying to match it but Olaplaex is still number one. Your colorist can mix it into your formula and finish it off at the sink, but you should also get the take-home to maintain it weekly.
Get regular haircuts. This sounds like a no brainer, but it really is key. If your a platinum blonde, or a highlight, it's extremely likely that you are getting bleached. Sorry to break it to you, but bleach opens up your cuticle, and when that happens over and over again, the hair can get dry and split. If you cut off a split end you're good to go. If you ignore it, it will go up the hair strand, or worse, break off completely. So you would you rather get a trim, or ignore it and have those tiny broken pieces sticking out all over leaving what's left of your ends a straggly stringy mess? Book a haircut every time you leave the salon. That way you'll always remember you're due for a cut.
Take home professional products. When your colorist recommends shampoo and conditioner it's to protect your color and their work. Your haircolor is an investment use every tool you have to keep it beautiful. Fifty percent of the work in making your hair color look good is done at the salon, the other 50% you do at home. Make sure you're using the right cleansing products. You just spent hundreds of dollars on the color, don't let that go to waste.
Feeling a little brassy? Shampoo with Shimmer Lights shampoo one time. It's an easy way to balance those pesky gold or orange tones that creep in without needing a gloss. Just don't over do it. Moisture is the name of the game, blonde hair needs it. Do weekly treatments at home. You can even sleep in one! Or, when you're headed off to yoga or the beach put that treatment in before. You'll have a chic bun and healthier hair after.
Consider washing your hair less. Did you know you never actually need to wash your hair? The less you wash the less oil your scalp will produce over time. Plan your workouts accordingly and suds those roots less. What can you do instead? Rinse, condition, and scrub. That's right, just scrubbing your scalp well with conditioner on your ends will leave you clean and smelling fresh if you feel the need. Alternatively you can use your favorite dry shampoo to absorb the oil so your blowout can last another day or two. There's also a TON of cleansing treatments on the market which you can supplement for more traditional shampoo and conditioners. They're typically one step and very gentle on the hair but you still get to feel clean and fresh.
Heat style your hair less. Maybe that means instead of blowdrying your hair right out of the shower, you let it air dry half way first. Either way you probably aren't towel drying as thoroughly as you should be. If you can't achieve a good at-home style without a blow dry and flat iron and curling iron, maybe consider getting your hair blown-out by a professional regularly. Skip those dry-bars as they have a tendency to over do it on the heat. Did you know you can re-blowout your hair? You don't have to shampoo to fix your slept-on sweat in hairstyle. Just grab a drier and a boar bristle brush. Hit the kinks for just a second and you're good to go! Still not loving your second-day hair? Rock a braid or up-do. Undone hair is in, so don't worry if it's not perfect. Still not loving your second-day hair? Rock a braid or up-do. Undone hair is in, so don't worry if it's not perfect.
If you do need a flat-iron or curling iron, use a heat protectant spray or cream.
Use styling products. Using the right products cuts down on the amount of styling you need to do to make your hair look good. Less heat styling equals healthier hair. Ask your stylist if you don't know what to use.
At the end of the day if your hair doesn't look healthy, it doesn't look good no matter how blonde you are.
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