Five months and counting…on October of last year, on my birthday, I decided to stop coloring my hair dark and slowly start lightening up & growing out my silver highlights. I even wrote about it for the Philippine Star’s Y-style section (read my blog entry here Hot Strands: Silver Streaks). It was daunting at first since I’ve had dark hair all my life (and I even kept a bottle of L’Oreal Excellence Natural Brown #5 on hand in case I changed my mind) but I found myself enjoying the style changes and really loving the transition process…
Since I didn’t want to cut my hair short, what I did was lighten my hair first (I shifted from a dark brown to a chocolate brown base, and I used a temporary dye that faded). Then as the roots grew out, I added light brown highlights to blend them into my brown hair, slowly shifting to ash-blonde highlights as the silver hair grew out and my temporary dye faded. I went for an ombré-in-reverse effect using highlights as I grew out my silver hair, and continued having trims to help it catch up.
Here’s what going from dark to light looks like through a series of Facebook profile pics…
…from dark brown…
…to chocolate brown…
…to adding light brown highlights…
…to growing out my silver highlights…
…to my current silver streaked ombré-in-reverse hair color.
So what do you think of the progress so far? Love it or hate it?
*Postscript 2017: What started out as a style experiment and personal journey led to some extraordinary things a few years later! To see the crazy adventure it took me on, read “Real Beauty, Surreal Experience” here
My fellow silver-streaked hair, I must admit it’s a nice transition. I’ve been wanting to go down the same path a few years back but my kids asked me if I’m old na because I have lots of white hair. So I decided to give it a few more years of religious salon trips for color and highlights, just to assure my kids that I am not as old as they might think. Hahaha! ? ? ? your hair!
I meant love love love your hair! I don’t know why the hearts appear as question marks in my previous comment =)
Thanks, Anne! And thanks for re-posting your comments here, I appreciate it 🙂 Oh, don’t get me wrong, I eventually enjoyed the changes but it still took a LOT of getting used to! Especially in the first few months. I think the transition is much faster if your hair is short though (like yours)…