I have been dying my hair since I was sixteen, so for over ten years now. In that time, I have been various different colours. I started off dying my hair red and have tried so many different dyes and shades over the years. A few years ago, I decided to embrace my natural ginger hair by dying it a brighter shade. Since then, I have kept up the orange with a few months of yellow ombre and red in between. A lot of people have asked me how I manage to keep my hair in such good condition and how I manage to keep it so bright. 

Dying my hair

I tend to only dye my hair with a permanent colour once every six weeks or so. I will mainly apply the dye to the roots and then cover the remaining hair. As my hair is naturally ginger anyway, the roots don’t look too bad as they are growing in. I always use the conditioner that comes with the hair dye to ensure that my hair doesn’t go dry. I don’t like to colour my hair permanently too often as the permanent hair dyes can really dry out your hair.

Washing my hair

I try to only wash my hair once or twice a week. Washing it too much means that the colour will be stripped and will fade a lot quicker. When I wash my hair, I don’t usually choose a shampoo that is especially for coloured hair. I use one that is for dry hair. When I am conditioning my hair, I will mix in a bit of semi-permanent dye to the conditioner and apply that to my whole head. I leave this mixture on for as long as I can while I chill out in the bath. I’ve tried many different semi-permanent colours over the last few years but recently, Lime Crime who are famously known for their vegan makeup range have come outwith their own hair dyes. The Lime Crime Unicorn Hair Dye comes in 13 bold colours which includes an orange. I am going to be picking a pot of this up to try out when my current colour runs out.

Using heat

I try not to use too much heat on my hair. I will blow dry it once it has been washed as my hair is so thick, it takes forever to dry naturally. I will then give it a quick go over with the straighteners to get rid of any frizz. I try to only straighten my hair once a week because I don’t want to get too many split ends. I always make sure to use a heat protector on my hair as well before I blow dry it. I then add a bit of hair oil as well,just for some extra hydration. The oil tends to tame my hair even further as well.

I love the colour that I have at the moment and I’m trying to get my hair back to the bright orange that I had a couple of years ago. After experimenting with yellow last year and accidentally dying it red at the beginning of this year, I want to go back to my favourite colour.