Ombre Hair!

THE LOOK

Courtesy: Google image & fashiontoast

So, for the last…9 months or so, I’ve been completely and utterly obsessed with ombre hair.  Now, if you guys have been living under a rock, you might not know what ombre hair is.  First off, ombre is a color effect where the color goes from light to dark over an item of clothing, which comes from the the French term for “shaded”.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, ombre hair is where ones hair goes from dark to light, usually from the roots to tips, respectively.  Usually, it just looks like “Oh, I’ve been too lazy to color my roots so I sort of just let my blonde hair grow out…” Although that sounds sort of trashy, the look provides more of an “effortless” feel.

Ombre hair has been seen on the likes of Drew Barrymore, Rachel Bilson, Rumi Neely of fashiontoast, and model Lily Aldridge.  It’s been a super popular look for a while, but I’ve never really had the balls to actually do it to my hair.  First, I was just too scared to do it to my own hair.  I was terrified that I would ruin it and my hair would look like an orange mess.  My other dilemma was that I didn’t have enough money to get it professionally done.  Nor did I really feel the need to do so, since I rarely spend a lot of money on my hair anyway (my haircuts usually cost about fifteen dollars, the beauty of tiny Asian salons).

So finally, I had the perfect amount of boredom mixed with courage to actually attempt to ombre my hair.  The process wasn’t hard, but mostly tedious.  For me, since my hair is so dark, it took me about 4 hours to get the ombre effect that I was going for.  Despite the large amount of time it too me to get the look, I absolutely love the results and I’m glad that I decided to do it myself.

THE PROCESS

FIRST STEP: Go to your local drugstore or beauty supply store and buy a lightening kit.  I went with the L’Oreal Super Blonde Creme Lightening Kit which looks like:

Courtesy: Google image

And cost me about, twenty dollars or so?  It’s basically like a regular hair dying kit, where you have to mix the ingredients and shake up the bottle until your arm hurts and whatnot…except this one smelled a lot worse.  Like, toxic.  Like, I felt like the fumes were going to burn my eyelashes off or something.

SECOND STEP: Follow the instructions given to you from the kit.  Basically, take the bleaching powder packet, pour the entire contents of the packet into the little bottle, mix the liquid and the powder until the consistency is thick.

THIRD STEP: Take the bottom half of your hair, or wherever you want to start, whether it is 1/2 to 3/4 of the way down, and basically start applying the bleach to your hair.  Focus more of the product on the ends of your hair.  Also, don’t make a really harsh line between  your un-dyed hair and the bleach.  The look is supposed to be messy and effortless, like it grew out naturally, so you want it to be a bit uneven.  Sounds scary, but looks better.

FOURTH STEP: Next, let that sit for about twenty minutes, rinse out your hair, and dry it with your dryer on the coolest setting.  It should look a bit lighter than your natural hair color.

FIFTH STEP: Then take some more bleach (the bleach comes in a small container, but it actually lasts a really long time) and apply it to your hair about 1 to 2 inches below where you applied it earlier.  Once again, you want to be a little messy with this so on some bits, you can go a little higher, and on others you can go a little lower.  Also, focus more on the ends.  That’ll help with the ombre effect.  Keep this on for about twenty to thirty minutes.

SIXTH STEP: Once again, rinse out your hair. Blow dry on the coolest setting.

Now, if you’re satisfied with the way your hair looks, then you can stop now.  Wash your hair and apply a deep conditioning hair mask since your ends will hate you from all the bleach.  However, since my hair is hard to dye, I had to keep going…

SEVENTH STEP: Repeat the fifth step, except another 1 to 2 inches below the previous line.  Focus it more at the ends.  Be messy.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Keep this on for thirty to forty minutes.

FINAL STEP: Rinse your hair and dry with your dryer on the coolest setting.  If you’re satisfied with the way it looks, I suggest hopping back in the shower wetting your hair, and applying a deep conditioning hair mask to your hair like the Argan Magic Restorative Hair Mask, which I bought from CVS for something like fifteen dollars.  Your hair will be dry from all the bleach and the hair mask will basically be your savior.

THE RESULTS

STYLING TIPS

In my opinion, this look is best when your hair is a bit messy or wavy.  It looks a bit awkward on straight hair.  Textured hair will add to the effortless, bed-heady look to the color.  An easy way to achieve the perfect bed-head look, especially if you don’t have any natural curl to your hair, is to:

1. Wash your hair at night, right before you’re about to go to bed.

2. Once you’re out of the shower, spritz your hair with a sea salt texturizing spray, the best one is probably the Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray.  Beauty and fashion gurus swear by this.  Rumi Neely recently posted a picture of the contents of her purse and, surprise surprise, this was in it.

3. Scrunch up your hair a bit and mess around with it.  You’ll instantly see that you’re getting a bit of added wave with the surf spray.  If you have naturally wavy or curly hair, you can probably skip this step.

4. Go to sleep and wake up looking impossibly cool and gorgeous.