How to Best Lighten Blonde Hair

Naturally blonde hair has many different colors throughout it. When it is colored, though, it tends to only be one shade. This looks very fake and unnatural. My hair is a medium yellow blonde color. I really don't like it that much, and have often joked that it is the color of urine. I've tried different ways of lightening my hair over the years. It took many tries, but I eventually found the best way to lighten blonde hair.

I tried a few times to color my hair at home. There were a few times that I didn't see a difference at all in my hair color. And other times the color was barely lighter, making it not worth how dry my hair became from coloring it. I quickly learned that blonde hair is hard to lighten at home yourself.

The first attempt at having the salon color my hair, I tried getting a highlight. It took forever for the girl doing my hair to pull strands of my hair through the cap. Maybe I'm just tender-headed as people call it, but it hurt. The end result was the highlighted hair was really light, which made my natural color underneath seem darker in comparison. However, it obviously wasn't my real color since naturally blonde hair isn't usually that much of a contrast.

The next time I wanted to color my hair, I returned to the salon to have it colored. I was shocked when I saw my hair after she finished. How could any competent hair stylist mess up that badly? My hair was clearly a fake, bright yellow color. It was the ugliest color blonde I ever saw. She was supposed to light my hair, not brighten it. She knew that it looked horrible and told me that I could come back for them to fix it. Honestly, I was ashamed to walk to my car and let people see me like that.

When I went back for the lady to fix my hair, she consulted with the manager in front of me. The manager told her to do a highlight and to pull more hair through the cap than they usually did so that it would look natural. Since she had to pull more hair through that usual, it hurt more than the first time I got a highlight. I liked the end result, but it's crazy to do an all over color and then a highlight when there are other options.

A few months ago, I decided to lighten my hair again. I had a job interview coming up and I wanted to look my best. When I called the salon, I told the lady who answered the phone that I needed a new hair stylist because my current stylist had moved away and didn't work there anymore. I told her that I wanted to lighten my hair, but that I also wanted it to look natural. I explained about the past attempts to lighten my hair and how they had turned out. She replied that the best choice was to do my hair in foils. I had heard of doing that, but I hadn't tried it yet. She was nice and very convincing, so I made an appointment.

When I arrived for my appointment, she explained that she was going to do an all over color using foils. To make it look natural, she said that she would alternate the foils between two lighter blonde colors. It sounded like the perfect plan. After I got home and my hair had dried, I realized that my hair was a bit brighter on top than I had wanted. I contacted her and she easily fixed the problem when I went back to the salon. All she did was put something on the top of my head for a few minutes that pulls out blonde color. It quickly lightened my hair on top, and it didn't affect the two alternating colors throughout my hair that gave it that natural look. Clearly, using foils with alternating blonde colors is the best way to lighten blonde hair.