Lighten Up

My workload is back to being at almost unimaginable levels, resulting in very long hours at the moment. However, I did manage to get a day off on Monday to go and get a very long overdue cut and colour. I haven’t had a haircut or colour since last November so it was very much needed.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know for most of that time I’ve had very dark/black hair. When I was a toddler I had naturally super dark brown hair then it seemed to lighten as I got older, until about 10 when it went really dark again. Childhood photos of me have hair ranging from light brown right up to almost black. But when I was 13 I committed to jet black hair and the rest, as they say, is history. Aside from a few years of brightly coloured hair, it’s mostly been black. But as you age the hair colour you had when you were younger often doesn't compliment your skin colour anymore as that changes as we age too. So the black had to go. I decided to go lighter, and more to my natural shade, about 2 years ago. I trusted this lengthy process to my amazing hairdresser Zoe from a small local salon here called Girasoli. Zoe has been a godsend for my hair. She took on the job of getting rid of my decades of black hair like a champ!

Over my visits she has gradually lightened and toned my hair and we each visit we also chop off a lot to cut out the black as much as possible. My own natural hair, now a mid-brown, lightens quickly and easily so in time all of the lightened black will be gone entirely. Until then, Zoe does an amazing job toning down and neutralising the slightly ginger-tinged lightened black. A lot of what you see here is my natural hair colour and Zoe has added lighter highlights throughout. The look is that really natural, sunkissed hair you got from playing outside all summer when you were a kid.

You can see from the before shot that my hair is slightly ginger in the lightened areas. In the after you can see that she has seamlessly blended my natural hair colour down into the light areas.

My plan is to grow out my layers and have a long bob, or ‘lob’. I have realised that super long hair is no longer manageable for me because my hair is just so thick. I’m really excited to have brand new hair!