Hair post: Getting your hair grey/silver & maintenance

Here we go! The post I had been procrastinating on for months loooo I finally sat down long enough (on a friday night nonetheless) and wrote this up. Including ample amount of selfies coz why not.
This is your basic bitch guide on how to get dark grey hair and maintaining it. Welp. And nope, you don't need to be a level 10 blonde - pale afk blonde to those of you who dont know hair levels....to get the same gunmetal ashy grey charcoal shit my dead locks have been rocking. Lets get to it.



What you will need:

• Bleach & Peroxide (oh)
• Toner & Peroxide (or mix your own)
• Purple Shampoo 
• Coconut Oil (or any deep conditioner of your choice)
• White Conditioner (I highly recommend DOVE)
• Roux Fanci-Full Temporary Color Rinse (True Steel)
• A lot of time and patience

 Lets get really real here, its a no-brainer that you need lightened hair to do this. If you are not familiar with bleaching hair and whatnot, I highly recommend going to a hair stylist to do it. I can go on and on about how to bleach hair, how to avoid minimal damage and etc, But do yourself a favor and just go get it done. But if you are a brave soul who is adventrous, then by all means, DIY it. I have several posts throughout this blog on how to bleach your own hair + care and maintenance.

I have a long history of abused hair and trust me, if I can nurture my hair back to somewhat managebale health, you can to. Let me tell you, this isn't my first rodeo going silver loooo

Once upon a time, fresh graduate from cosmetology school - I was young, reckless and impatient.
and thought it was a very good idea to kill my hair to get it silver. Little did we know then...but mostly I gotta commend it to my lack of patience 

Theres probably photographic evidence of how much my hair has suffered circa 2012 loooo but I will not dig that deep so you can enjoy this mini version of it as illustrated by my friend Toshi.

I did vol.40 bleach on my hair 3-4 times to get it to a nice pale 10+ level blonde. What is toner. 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Simply put, I was convinced toner wasn't going to cut it for me then. Back then Wella Silver lady (a blue-purple) toner was your go to color and we were all obsessed with getting SILVER GREY SHINY hair. So yeah. Lets bleach our head 3-4x with vol. 40 and just get as much pigments out of there as possible. THEN use clairol shimmer lights shampoo for 10 mins in the shower everytime just to get that lovely Sephiroth sheen without the length...

SO NO DONT DO THAT LOL.

This here is your reference guide on how to get to the right level of blonde you want. The more ashy your blonde is, the less silver or true steel grey it will be. I will show you example of differnt tones and phases in this post. 

After I lost a good 4-5" off the bottom lenght of my hair I basically NO MORE IM NEVER DOING GREY OR BLONDE EVER AGAIN. yeah, never say never..... 

Fast forward years later and free tub of bleach later....I opted to go basic bitch ombre on my hair to try and save my hair as much as possible and lets get real, root maintenance is a pain in the ass. Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

 As you can tell, my hair has variation levels/shades of blonde 

that is because I had my hair colored different tones prior to me trying to bleach it all out

and you can see just how yellow it is, its not a level 10! 

For the most part I was a level  7-8 blonde, which is still considered pretty dark and yellow.

but thats ok, I wasn't going for that silver silver hair tone but more on the gun-metal darker grey color.

From here on, I threw vol 18 developer with wella 050 toner.

Which isn't a real toner but an additive.

Don't ask - just do it. Or this post will be 10x longer if I have to explain what that is versus toner lol.

think of it as pure pigments. Ayeeee

And as color theory teaches us, purple/blue cancels out orange and yellow and thats exactly what we're trying to achieve here.

 

Leave it on for however long the instruction tells you to do so, rinse it out. Afterwards you want to slap on that color rinse stuff all over your  damp hair.

Don't do it over dry hair or it will leave your hair nasty and crispy. You do not need to rinse out the color rinse, you leave it on as your hair dries

pro tip: I actually mix my colour roux rinse with leave-in spray conditioner to help condition and detangle my hair as it dries. Ayeeee.

This is what your hair will look like after the toner fades out eventually, because yes - it will fade out. And I just re-deposit color/tone it every other week with my own mixture instead of buying the titanium color dyes

As you can tell, some parts of my hair are greyer or more purple than some. That is because some pieces of my hair is lighter than the rest and therefore more porous, this also attributes due to the mixture I use for toning and maintaining my hair.

I do not buy titanium/grey dyes because its just simply too expensive - especially if you have to retouch your hair as much as I do. But, by all means, feel free to buy them if you'd prefer. I'm just...ghetto and prefer to be more cost effective so I just mix a big tub of my own toner/conditioner.

It took a lot of trial and error to get this right in all honesty and its still not 100% perfect.

I don't measure, I just eyeball my color mixture. So this is simply a guide...

To mix (my own) color toner/conditioner/ whatever you'd like to call it you will need the following:

• White conditioner (again I recommend DOVE intense reconstruction) or Tresemme (their not too expensive and can be bought off your local drug store)
• Keratin Serum (optional) 
• Blue Dye
• Red Dye

When I can, I usually reach for the protein fillers in red and blue in place of blue/red deposit only dyes but if you can't get them and prefer to use dyes - manic panic or jerome russell are my top recommends, a tub of each will set you back $6-10 but a little goes a really really long way considering your diluting them. OR you can just simply buy purple dye and dilute it.

Why protein fillers though? Because your dead-fried hair needs as much protein back in there as possible to keep it from snapping right off! Which is also why I shove in keratin serum in my little tub mixture coz my hair needs all that good stuff.

This is my hair at its lightest (I'd say this was about a level 9-10 already) and on the left side is with my current mixture of toner. 

2 parts black-blue jerome russel punky

1 part blue protein filler

.5 part red protein filler 

Half a bottle of white conditioner (coz I like to mix it in huge tubs)

The reason why I prefer to mix my own is because color theory.

Depending on how warm or cool my current blonde is looking, I can adjust the purple to be more cool purple or more warmer purple to achieve the right color I need to cancel out the tone/shade that is currently on my hair. This also allows me to darken it up (by adding black-blue) to get a more steel-grey color.  Right above you will see that the color is a muddy-ish purple color. That is because I'm reaching for steel grey or cobalt grey and not super silver shiny grey.

I prefer to apply this on my  dry hair a few mins before showering or on days when I have to shampoo my hair and I also apply it in place of a conditioner after shampooing with purple shampoo. 

This really helps lock in and tone my hair each time to keep that steel color fresh. And of course after your shower apply your colour rinse, hair oil/serum and then your good to go.

Hopefully this is informative enough, and remember - give your hair a break in between bleaching jobs, dont bleach it to death in one sitting. But also understand before you go with this color - realize the maintenance and care that goes to keeping it and achieving it. You will have breakage, you will damage your hair, you will loose an inch-or two of hair, you will also shell out a lot of money. (but there are ways to save as I mentioned above) 

Vanity comes with a price.