Blondes Have More Fun? DIY Platinum Blonde

This post is going to be all about how I went platinum blonde by myself and without completely thrashing my hair. I've said it before, I'm not a professional. I am just an experienced at home hair colorer who likes to share her experiences. These are just my opinions on what works for my hair. It takes patience and a willingness to have less than desirable results in between stages, but it's worth it to take longer and get good results than to rush it and melt off your hair.

If you've read this blog for any length of time you will notice that I am pretty willing to experiment with my hair and I change it a lot. I've been brown, burgundy, blonde, blonde with fire engine red underneath, blonde with pink and turquoise streaks, short, long and everything in between. But I always feel my best blonde. I've just never been brave enough to go blonde all over without changing it back fairly quickly. I tried it before and just couldn't get it the color I wanted so I went darker. Since then I've been highlighting it myself with foils at home and as it does, it just got blonder and blonder and it was getting hard to get the roots as blonde as the rest of my hair. I knew I didn't want to add lowlights so I took the jump and just went for it.

This time, I am actually super pleased with it and loving the results. It's a brave look for me, it's a comittment to keeping up with the roots and using all the right products to keep it platinum and not brassy. But for now, it's worth it and I wanted to share how I did it in case anyone is interested.

To start, this is pretty much my regular hair color...

That lovely mousey dark blonde shade. It's fine but I just feel like it's very blah on ME, personally. And that hottie is my cute mama.

So after 2 or 3 rounds of DIY highlights in foils I got to this point. It's a medium blonde that goes brassy very easily. Not exactly the end result I wanted.

 

After about 3 more foil sessions (over 2 month period) I got this color. Which was a very pretty blonde on the ends but my roots always looked funky. Just a different shade of blonde than the ends of my hair that I couldn't get to match.

 

So I decided to just bleach my roots. I used the Salon Care bleach powder from Sally's (I buy the tub rather than the packets), 30 vol developer and applied to the roots only. I applied the Wella T18 toner, which any DIY blonde girl knows will be your best friend. The roots were still slightly warmer than I'd like. So I let that rest for about 3 weeks.

 

Then last night I did the roots again, left the bleach on about 25 minutes until it was a pale buttery shade. I rinsed the bleach out, towel dried and toned the roots only (same bleach, developer and toner) . My ends are already ashy enough for me and I didn't want them to go purple. I left the toner on about 7 minutes and I got the ideal (for me) platinum blonde. I'm not looking for white or silver. Just light blonde. Since it's only about 24 hours old it does look very, very white, but I know that on me in 2-3 days it does tone down and I like it the best with about 1 week worth of grow out.

 

I can let it go 3-4 weeks between touching the roots up. I don't mind the roots but I know if I go much longer than that it gets harder to get the roots to lift without the heat from my scalp. I have only bleached the section from my ears up, so the underneath is still my natural color. I like this on me because it's very hard for me to bleach the back of my hair by myself and I do wear my hair up a lot (ratty buns are my best friend). I've always liked the look of a different color underneath my hair and I feel like having that natural in the back just looks fun and a stays little healthier than all over blonde. I do think that after the next touch up I will add a few blonde lowlights to keep it from going "playboy bunny blonde".

Maintenance for me consists of Shimmering Lights purple shampoo (sold at Sally's) about twice a week. I leave it on for about 5 minutes while I do other shower things and then rinse and condition. It's the best purple shampoo I've ever used and it lasts forever. It does have a slightly more "mature" scent to it but the results are worth it. It's powerful stuff. I've also used Shiny Silver which smells better but it's not as potent as the Shimmering Lights.

Since it's bleached it does need a lot of moisture. I do masks twice a week and do argan oil on my ends every day. I only heat style once a week and shampoo every other day. I just blow dried this morning and can tell the difference. I curl my hair about once a week as well.