The adventures of dying your hair at home...doom doom doooooom

I love getting my hair done whether I'm doing or someone else is, but its stressful. You never know if the colour's going to turn out as good as you envision it.  I have been dying my hair for years on end.  I've done both a box dye and have had it coloured by a stylist so I know both sides. 

Dying your hair from a box is SO much cheaper than going to a salon.  Depending on the length of your hair and if there's highlights involved you're paying from $120-$200+ for the colour and the cut. One thing I can't do on my own is cut my hair.  I've tried doing my bangs before and it's a crooked disaster!! Though people are attracted to box dying because of the cost, if you're like me and slightly change the colour/shade each time you're dying it you should go get it professionally done every couple of colours because eventually it'll become quite obvious that you're box dying and the different shades will show through.

Yesterday I decided my hair needed to be done because it was out of control.  My bangs were so grown out and the colour was faded, but I was strapped for cash so I decided I'd fork out the money for the cut, but do the colour on my own.  I go to Chatters salon for my hair.  I don't have a particular stylist I go to there, but every person I've had has been great. I got my hair cut pretty short, it hasn't been this short since I was about 15 (I'm 24 now). 

After the cut I went to Shoppers Drugmart to pick out a colour.  I've been dying my hair a shade of red for years.  It's varied from time to time from darker to lighter to purple undertones etc.  My natural hair colour is a reddish brownish concoction so I just enhance the red tones.  Since I knew the colour I was doing my hair that narrowed down the selection a bit.  I decided on Garnier Nutrisse in Intense medium red copper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those that have never boxed dyed their hair before it's quite simple and the instructions are straight forward. Put the supplied gloves on, mix the product together and apply it to your hair.  I don't know if there's an art to applying box dye to your hair, but I focus on the roots first and apply through the length of my hair.  I also use a comb to help apply the dye more evenly.  The wait times also vary between 10 mins to about 30 mins depending on what colour your original hair is and if you have grey hair or not (I left my dye in for the recommended 25 mins).  Afer that, you rinse out your hair until the water runs clear and massage in the conditioner that comes with the dye.  Easy and simple except when you panic a bit like I did.  When I mixed my colour it was very orange in the bottle (I've never had that happen before) and same with when I applied it to my hair.  I was a bit concerned that I was going to look like Carrot Top

 

 

Thankfully after the rinse and conditioner my hair colour turned out great!!  I'm really happy with it!  So all in all I spent just under $50 on the cut itself and $13 on the hair dye saving myself anywhere from $60-$140+!