I can’t believe it’s taken me over a year to think of this, but I thought I’d make a post about how I get my hair pink. I get the occasional question about it and while I was trying to figure out how to do it on my own, I found myself doing a lot of Googling, with few helpful recommendations, so hopefully, you find this somewhat insightful.

Visiting The Salon

First off, let me just say the initial bleach job I got done in a salon. I went to Funky Toque on St-Laurent. Going from black to light blond was not something I wanted to deal with myself. To be quite honest, I’ve never really met any hair dressers who do exactly what I want and do it well, except one lady who went on maternity leave and I think stopped cutting hair, which is why I’ve been giving myself haircuts for the past couple of years. I don’t know if I would necessarily recommend Funky Toque. I can imagine my hair turning out better than it did, but also worse. I guess they were okay.

They also dyed it and I HATED the way it looked. I wanted a pastel pink and it ended up pretty neon. Also, they bleached it twice and some of my hair ended up a pale yellow, but some strands ended up orange and other shades in between. I can’t explain why it ended up like that and I didn’t ask for it to be done that way (I wanted one uniform colour). But dye fades and mainly, I just didn’t want my hair to be super damaged or end up with a harsh bleach line near my roots.

Bleaching At Home

Going into it, I wasn’t expecting my hair to be light enough after the salon visit to become the pastel pink I was going for. I was thinking I’d get the bulk of the lightening done at a salon and then have another go with a drugstore bleach after a few weeks had passed.

I picked up the L’Oreal Paris Colorista Ombre Bleach kit and Kyler helped me apply it to the pieces of hair that were still pretty yellow/orange instead of light blond. Well, it only lightened my hair up a bit, so I decided to pick up the L’Oreal Feria Absolute Platinum Advanced Lightening System kit and after another few weeks, went to work re-bleaching again.

Here’s how my hair looked before the Feria Absolute Platinum application and after:

I am relatively happy with the results. I don’t know if it lightened my hair 7 levels (I have no idea how to judge that) but it is more uniformly light blond now and there is less orange, though obviously, it’s not exactly platinum blond throughout. In a perfect world, all of the orange and yellow would be gone, but I’m not sure that’s possible with what I’m willing to try at home by myself.

I should point out that the “before” photos show how my pink hair looked after fading naturally. It might have turned out better if I had gotten all of the dye out before bleaching, but I was too lazy to do that.

Also, side note: if you don’t know what you’re doing or aren’t comfortable with hair bleach, you should absolutely go to a salon. I approached this whole process very gingerly and slowly and by that I mean, I tried more gentle things for several months and only worked my way up to the stronger stuff after it was clear the weaker stuff wouldn’t do the trick.

This whole process was very trial and error to find what my hair would tolerate. Apparently, my hair is very resilient and can take a lot. It might be because prior to bleaching my hair for the first time, it was “virgin” hair and somewhat thick to begin with, but my hair is only slightly drier and a bit more prone to breaking after my bleaching/dyeing adventures. Your hair might not react the same way, so be careful!

Dyeing Your Hair Pink

For the pink dye, I make my own colour using L’Oreal Blonde Conditioner for Blonde or Color-treated hair paired with one or more of the following dye(s):

 

• Arctic Fox Semi Permanent Hair Color in Virgin Pink

• L’Oreal Paris Colorista Semi-Permanent Hair Colour for Blonde Hair in Pink and Soft Pink

• Manic Panic Semi Permanent Hair Color in Cotton Candy Pink

 

It’s a different mix every time I re-dye my hair, depending on what I have on hand. I also kind of just eyeball the colour, so it ends up slightly different each time. If the mix is more saturated, I go probably 2-3 weeks without having to re-dye it. If it’s a more pale concoction, I’d go 2 weeks max without re-dyeing.

You could substitute the conditioner with any kind of hair colour diluter if you want. And if you go for a more saturated or neon look, I think all the dyes I’ve used above would last way longer. I’ve kind of accepted that to achieve my desired look, it will require a bit of maintenance, but I don’t mind really.

I decided to try a new dye this time around (got2b color Bright/Pastel in Shocking Pink) so I can’t speak to how long this one lasts. We will see! Each time I mix the dye with conditioner, I try to get a colour close to this:

I do prefer my dyes to be a cooler pink. I feel like the purple in the hair colour helps to counteract the orange and yellow tones in my bleached hair. The end result is a fairly neutral tone of pink. Getting a colour close to the above makes my hair slightly brighter than pastel, but it helps the colour last longer. I find that after one wash, it becomes the perfect shade of pastel on me.

So let me know if you have any questions, I’ll try to help if I can! And let me know if you’ve stumbled upon a pastel pink dye that is more long lasting than the ones I’ve been using. I’m always trying new ones in search of a holy grail…

xoxo