New hair

After having had blue, blue-green and blue-purple hair since June, I decided it was time to mix things up a bit. I’ve loved having blue hair, its been one of the best style decisions I’ve ever made. It cheered me up every time I looked in the mirror and every time I saw a kid tugging at a parent’s sleeve whilst pointing at me. I’ve had more compliments (real genuine, non-creepy compliments) from strangers about my hair then about anything else. Having blue hair is brilliant.

Now, I haven’t been able to totally get rid of the blue because that would make me cry, but I have a dark brown layer on top and blue/purple underneath. The colour shows best when I put my hair up, but it’s noticeable as my hair moves all the time.

Minutes before I got rid of my original colour and went blue

So why change at all? Well, there’s a few reasons. The most important one is that I wanted to avoid stagnation. When I first got my hair dyed I’d been stuck in a style rut literally forever. I had long brown hair. It was curly. I got it cut about twice a year and I didn’t like it very much but sometimes I guess it was kind of ok. I liked that it was long and that was about all. But I never changed it because I was afraid that I wouldn’t like what I did (we’ve all taken a risk and ended up with a bad cut). So, I didn’t want to get stuck by habit again, which meant it was important to do something new. Even if it was only a little bit new.

A couple of hours later – the first blue

The second reason is that I’m starting to notice breakages. This could be caused by all kinds of things. It might be due to an old hair-dryer. I just learned that you need to replace your dryers every year because as you use it it gets worse at evenly distributing heat, which then increases hair damage. It might also be due to the rubbish weather, central heating or wearing hats. Then, it could be due to the fact that every eight weeks I get it bleached and dyed. I’m still dying it, but part of this style is to wean me off the blue which needs bleach (eventually I plan to grow my original colour back in at which point I’ll probably look for a new bright idea). Hence, just having brown on top means I don’t need any bleach and might alleviate some hair damage.

Blue, this time with a little more green. Coming up next: Purple!

The third reason, which is by no means insignificant, is that it’s expensive to get done. At least, to get it done professionally by a bleaching and colouring expert in a quite simply glorious salon (Number659 on Great Western Road in Glasgow) just isn’t, and could never be cheap. If it were cheap I’d be suspicious. Hell, I could do it myself almost for free but I wouldn’t get it right, I’d make a mess, I’d damage my hair, the colour would look wrong and it would wash out super quick. I don’t want any of that. It is 100% worth the cost… but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally add up what I’ve spent so far and wince. It’s brought me a lot of joy and it’s worth every penny, but I really need to keep trying new things with it if I’m going to be spending that much.

So, here we are. Dark brown hair with bright, exciting hair hiding underneath. I love it. I loved having bright colour that screamed from the roof tops but I also love having bright colour that’s a barely kept secret. Oh, I just thought of another reason; I’m also less likely to have trouble with passport control now that my hair is closer in colour to that in my passport photo. I guess that’s a factor?

And now! Ok, not going to lie, I actually hate this selfie, and I’m going to change it as soon as it doesn’t look toooo vain to do so, but I love the hair and that’s the main thing.

Anyway, I was worried that changing things would ruin my day and all of my fun but I’m really happy. Only 659 could have done it. As always, if you’re going for colour, and I do mean any colour, not just bright unusual things like I have, then I genuinely don’t think there’s a better place in Glasgow (probably Scotland) to get it done.

I’m not sure how long it will be before I feel like it needs to be updated again, eight weeks used to work really well, but maybe I’ll need a different schedule now. For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to swish my hair, play with my hair, plait my hair and just generally enjoy it. It definitely feels new again.