Blonde is [not] the new gray

So it's been seven months since I've blogged about my gray experiment. The last entry (in July 2015) found me hoping that my hairdresser, Stacie, would come across a silver shade that would stick. The idea was that if we got the blonde light enough, the silver would cover it and my transition to gray would look a little more natural. But then Stacie had to go on maternity leave and I found another hairdresser that told me he knew exactly how to fix things. He told me that you have to take all the pigment out of the hair in order to get it to silver, and that he'd do a full platinum highlight. So I went for it. He did a great job with the highlight, but when he finished I realized that I was still a blonde. The following photos are from right after my highlight with him.

But then just like all the other things I've tried, the blonde eventually started turning warmer and warmer, which is apparently what bleached hair does. As it turns out, Stacie left hairdressing for good so I went to one of her colleagues, who put a toner on it. It really cooled it down. She told me that if I'd just keep washing my hair with the purple shampoo It would stay cool. But alas, no. So here's how it looks today. After all of this coloring and trying to naturally transition to gray, I'd say fuhggedaboutit, especially if you've been dying your hair dark brown for 20 years!

I don't hate the blonde, but it has its own set of problems. Now you can see that the majority of my lower layer of hair is still quite dark, but it isn't warm. So the line of demarcation is quite stark.

I love the color of my natural hair. I'll probably just keep putting toners on it 'till it's long enough to chop the blonde off. Until then I'll be a calico. Trying to blend the gray in subtly was worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend it to people who've been dying their hair dark for decades. The experts are right: there's no easy way to make the transition.