How to get GREY, SILVER hair?

I have been dying my hair for many years and I went from black to blonde, pink, red, blue, brown, I did most of it at home because I am slightly afraid of hairdressers, but I also love to experiment, and it’s much cheaper to do it yourself when you want a new color every few weeks. I am by no means a professional…. in anything, and I would advise you to visit one, if you are thinking about a drastic change to your hair or if you are really attached to it. I’m definitely not overly attached to my hair, considering what I’ve put it through! This post is for anyone that is going to ignore the voices of reason telling them: GO TO A PROFFESIONAL! DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF! YOUR HAIR WILL FALL OUT! That all might be true but I know you, and you need to see for yourself don’t you?  So I will try and help by explaining how I got this awesome gray/silver hair, by using a toner.

What you will need:

• Schwarzkopf BLONDEME developer (recomended for toning is 2% or 6%, but I have 9% from when I retouch my roots)
• Schwarzkopf BLONDEME toning cream in STEEL BLUE (they have other shades as well, but I have not tried those yet)
• a hair dye brush (pick a soft one so it doesn’t stab you in the scalp)
• a mixing bowl, non metal! (I used a fancy glass vase)
• gloves
• mirror
• hair clips
• comb

THE PROCESS:

Your hair needs to be very pale blond in order to get nice results, I bleach my hair at home using Schwarzkopf BLONDE ME products, that you can find online.

My hair was freshly washed and dried before applying toner, I’m not sure that it needs to be washed or dry, but if you have blonde hair you will know it’s easier to divide and comb through it when it’s dry. Another thing about dry vs. wet is that salons are normaly going to bleach your hair first, to get the desired lift and then tone it to get the end result. So for them it’s more cost efficient if they apply toner on wet hair, directly after washing the bleach out. However applying toner on wet hair might result in a less intense tone, as it gets slightly diluted. So like I said I decided to apply my toner on washed, dried hair.

I first divided my hair into 4 sections, just to make it easier for myself when applying.

Then I mixed the toning cream with developer. Because I only had 9% developer, and you should NOT use that with the toning cream, I diluted the developer with tap water. Now a much better option is using destilled or deionized water to avoid a possible reaction between the hydrogene peroxide and metal ions, but because it’s my own hair I didn’t really care. But you should! The instructions say to mix the toning cream and developer in 1:1 ratio. So I used a whole tube of toning cream, and added an equal amount of water, developer mixture in 1:2 ratio.

I then appied it straight on to my hair, working in sections, making sure to cover all of my hair really well.

I was doing so well with my two front sections, but I was also distracted by the Pirates of the Caribbean movie and when I noticed I’m running out of my toner it was already too late. My advice: always get more tubes that you think you will need! My hair is not that long but there is surpisingly alot of it, so if your hair is longer or thicker get yourself atleast two tubes, of you might end up looking like this:

After I coverd all my hair (or just the front half) I let it develop for 30min, that is the max recomended time. If you leave it for a shorter time period your tone will not be as intense. I then washed it out, shampooed my hair as normal, and applied conditioner. After washing everything out I dried my hair, and it did not feel any more damaged then before. I really like the end result, and I will surely buy another tube asap to fix the back haha.

This is how my hair looked like before toning:

And after toning. I really like this hair color, makes me feel so mature and wise (JK).

This is how the toner looked after two weeks, the first time I used it. It washed out very evenly.

And this is how my hair turned out after I had to retouch my roots again, very pretty blonde:

If you have any questions about my hair, or hair in general please leave them in the comments and I will try my best to give you my advice!

 

Thank you for reading! xxx