Dyeing My Hair Blue and Purple: Advice and Product Reviews

I had wanted to dye my hair blue/purple for many a year now and I'd never quite found the right time (what with school and all) so when it came to going off to college I decided it was the perfect time to get out of my comfort zone and go for it, I sort of went into it with no prior knowledge of the best way to do this and it was especially hard for me as I started off with dark brown hair so I thought I'd put out some helpful tips for anyone thinking about dyeing their hair an 'unnatural colour' so here we go:

The first step in going from brown to blue/purple is bleaching, I went for Jerome Russell B Blonde High Lift powder bleach, it's very inexpensive and does the trick well but as my hair is very thick I did have to buy about 2 boxes of this (I ended up with some left over but I always think it's better to be safe than sorry) the powder sachets are £3.99 from boots plus the cream peroxide which are about £1 each (I had about 5 to cover my hair but like I said I did have some left over) 

If you have dark brown hair like mine then you may need to repeat the bleaching process if you are 

hoping to go a light colour.

The next step is conditioning, I had to go through two rounds of bleach to get light enough for my blue hair dye to work as I was going for a very light shade, this left my hair feeling rough and damaged so I decided to look into getting a deep conditioner for my hair, I tried and tested a few products and I found one that works wonders on damaged hair

Aussie 3 minute miracle reconstructing deep conditioner truly is a miracle, although it says to leave this on for 3 minutes I like to leave this on my hair for about an hour to really let it work it's magic and afterwards my hair feels soft and nourished. After repeated use I found that any split ends that I had been left with after bleaching completely vanished. This product is a bargain at £2.99 from savers (it is sold elsewhere if you don't live near a savers but it is more expensive at places like boots).

Now we get onto the fun part, dyeing your hair! I have tried 3 different brands of hair dye, the first being crazy color bubblegum blue

This dye is the cheapest out of the ones I have used at only £2.99 a bottle, I bought this because I wanted to go a very pastel blue colour but when I put it on I discovered that it was much brighter than first anticipated 

although I did use it again but this time I mixed it with my aussie 3 minute miracle conditioner (but you can use any conditioner) and it came out much lighter than the first time as you can see here:

However this dye did not give me full coverage and faded quickly so I ended up having to dye it frequently so I wouldn't recommend this unless you're willing to do multiple dye sessions

As you can see I dip-dyed the ends of my hair purple and for that I started off by trying Directions Lilac Hair Dye

but unfortunately it didn't show up on my hair at all and just came out almost grey so I decided to use a stronger colour, Directions Violet Hair Dye

which as you can see is very bright (a lot brighter than I intended) but after adding conditioner to it I managed to acheive a colour nearer to my ideal, this is only £3.99 and the pot lasts a long time, however once it starts to fade it goes a grey colour and I did have to dye it a lot.

It was a lot of effort maintaining two colours so in the end i ended up letting the purple wash out and sticking with just blue, I decided to try a different dye this time, Bleach London Washed Up Mermaid

which is by far my favourite hair dye product, it is slightly more expensive at £5 a bottle from boots and I do have to buy 2 bottles to cover my hair but it is a perfect light bluey green colour and takes a while to fade (I only have to re-dye my hair about once a month whereas with the others it was about once a week)

please excuse my earphone knot but this is the colour my hair went after using this product, as you can see it is very light with a slightly greeny tinge to it and is as the label suggests a colour I would associate with a mermaid.

After dyeing my hair I like to repeat the conditioning process

I hope this post was helpful to you, this is my first blog post so it might be a bit rough and I am hoping to make a youtube video on the same topic so stay tuned for that, please leave a comment if you have any tips or tricks you'd like to share or anything you'd like me to talk about next.

thanks for reading
xxx