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The author, before and after.
(Ed. Note: We were pretty leery of this whole ombre hair thing, until our sales intern waltzed in the office one day looking fantastic with her own DIY job. We demanded that she write down her method for our beloved readers/us mostly)
I’m someone who rarely gets her hair cut and almost never dyes it. The last and only time I did anything was in 10th grade when I dyed the underside of my hair fire-engine red to accompany my totally rad side bangs and sweet Saves the Day hoodie. Besides those years, I have always had very dark brown, wavy, boring hair (Ed. Note: Preposterous. Her hair is beautiful). Fast forward 5 years, and although my style and taste in music has improved a bit, I still have the same exact haircut and color as I did when I was 18.
The other day, I realized this and knew I had to do something. Like right away, not the next day, but at that moment. No salons are open at 9:30pm and I didn’t want to spend $400 on my hair anyway…
But, who needs professionals when we have the internet?
After browsing hairstyles, I decided to go with the ombre, two-toned look, and knew that the only reasonable option was to do it myself, so I did. And so can you.
Let’s begin:
Step 1: Find the type of ombre hair you like the most
Being a naturally dark brunette, I thought I might look completely ridiculous with blonde in my hair. After seeing tons of dark haired ladies with ombre hair online, I realized this could actually turn out okay. Some girls have only a tiny portion of blonde at their ends, and others have opted to lighten almost all over. I knew I wanted something in the middle so I felt Lily Aldridge and Rachel Bilson were the closest to the image in my head. Next, I pulled up a bunch of photos to have as references during the dying process.
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OMG!!! I love your hair!! This is exactly how I want mine! Might have to give it a try!! :)
I give you credit for trying this on your own and.. you’re hilarious! I actually laughed out loud while reading this. Thanks!
I am coloring my clients hair to cover gray level 7 which is a very nice med maybe med light brown her mid shaft down to ends is blonde from highlites so I was trying to do ombre letting the root grow and blend to ends so I pulled level 7 in different lengths only to the bone check and it ended up leaving a line of demarcation how to I fix that? The top is light brown and th
e ends are blonde! Need your help soon as possiable !! Thanks Kim
Im a huge fan of this look, and have done it to many people and do it to my own hair as well, and btw you look beautiful! I am a pro hairdresser, i went to toni and guy academy, and this look was hard for me to learn, it can be tricky, i would reccomend instead of lightnening all over choose a haircolor (you used the clairol level 5 brown, im not sure if that lifts I know pro color best) that will lift your roots, as long as you have virgin hair if you use a high developer and patience to allow the color to fully develop according to the manufactuer(20 or 30 volume, if your hair is extremely dark and healthy maybe a 40, and go to a beauty supply and try to find a creme color line like Satin[I love that brand]) and apply it root to mid shaft, which goes about an inch away from your scalp to about an inch from your ends, so anywhere in the midshaft you would like to see the lighter pieces, then apply the lighter in small sections from where the color is (midshaft) thru the ends and be patient! lightner turns hair orange because you have to get it past a certain level because hair has natural undertones the darker the warmer(red, orange, yellow) your hair is. that is a great diy look, but I HIGHLY recommened leaving it to the pros!
I see it and all I think is, someone’s dye job is growing out. I just can’t imagine someone wanting their hair to look like they are growing it out. To me it is kinda like the Emperor’s New Clothes. It is not a good look on anyone, imho. It just appears unkempt and overlooked and I want to hand each girl my stylist’s biz card. Sorry, but I can’t see the diff between “ombre” and outgrown dye job.
hi love the style on ur hairr really love it, i have a question, im not sure if mi hair its going to end like yours because y just bought a darker blonde for the roots, but i just want to ask if i dont choose to aply any dy on mi roots its going to be nice?, mi hair its virgin
That is really nice way you have explain how to make this hair style. I have had some good hair styling products from http://sfrbeauty.com/. I think they will be very useful here.
‘But, who needs professionals when we have the internet? ‘
you should really stick to writing and not hair, from one professional hairstylist to a non professional as yourself.
AGREED!!! leave fucking up your hair to yourself and stop giving out shitty advice on how to permanently damage your hair at home!!!
MEOW lol! Catty catty. Why are you so bitter? Speaking as a professional hairstylist myself, I think she did a great job! I understand it could take potential business away from us if everyone went around doing their own hair, but they don’t. And it just allows us to be the heros when those people who do fuck up their hair come in and want us to fix it.
I have no idea why you’re so upset.
After seeing your lovely results and reading the comments, I decided to go for the trend but leave it to the pros.
BAD idea
the tips of my hair were supposed to be golden, and the color was supposed to degrade from chocolate brown to golden.Instead I ended up with near black roots, a weird orange-y for the tips and a VERY blunt line from one color to the next.
I looked at myself in the mirror (after asking my brother, father and husband to stop laughing, please),whipped out a box of hair dye and followed your instructions. 10 of the 35 minutes have passed and already I’m loving it so much more than the pro’s hideous results. if it turns out all right I’ll post some photos. NO WAY I’m letting you see the freak I looked before!!!
ok just washed my hair…. it looks amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!
If you’re going to use the Born Blonde- it will absolutely work… *as long as you do not have previously dyed hair*! It works like a charm on virgin hair, but it will not lift out dye. My hair was perfectly yellow-blonde whereever I had virgin hair. My dyed areas? Well, my hair is now brown, red, blonde *and green*. It’s going to cost me about $200 and 2 sessions with my colorist to fix it.
Bleaching hair out, and re dying it darker, faces the risk of looking green, if you choose a brown without a warm(red) undertone. A must. I also noticed that this article is posted on the blog of a wedding website. Do it yourself hair color and a wedding dont go. See a professional.
Just putting this out there… Ombre can also be done naturally by bleaching your whole head and letting your hair grow out. This is how the trend came to be in the first place — celebrities decided they wanted their natural colors back and instead of re-dying their whole head, they just let it grow out. Sarah Jessica Parker has been doing this for years. And besides, boxed hair dye is TERRIBLE for your hair! Especially going blonde when you have dark hair. Believe me, I did my own hair for about 10 years and now I’m paying for it (literally and figuratively) just to get my hair back to a healthy shade of natural.
I am clearly late, ahem.
You look beautiful.
I just wanted to ask, is there anyway to leave the darker half of your hair it’s natural (dark) colour? Or will it look to stark in comparison to the colour bottom half?
Wow.. Just read this article while working today, came home after buying the box of clairol (i chose the light brown instead of medium because my hair is a little lighter naturally) and I love the results!~
Thanks for the tips! :)
My hair had turned lighter and started getting very blondy/brassy from the sun, so i just did the brown part, as my hair was already fully the color it needed to be for the bottom.. Didnt turn out as drastic as I would have liked but definitely better than being TOO drastic! Theres always next time..
How to get ombre hair: Dye hair. Decide to go back to natural color. Use color stripper that works slowly while your hair grows out. Pretend to be stylish when people say you have lovely hair. Worked for me.
I’ve never dyed my hair before, and this might sound like a silly question, but if I left the dye in for longer on the bottom and less and less time toward the top of my head, would this help with the ombre effect?
Your editor sucks. Ironically, that was shown with the editorial note. If an entire stand-alone sentence is in parentheses, the period (or whatever the closing punctuation is) goes inside the parentheses, too.
The worst part was the sentence that started with the coordinating conjunction offset from the rest of the sentence by a comma FOR NO REASON AT ALL! “But” does not work the same way as “however”!
“Dark haired ladies” would be dark women with hair! The compound adjective is a closed one: “dark-haired,” dammit.
Pure garbage, your proofreading. I won’t even look at page 2.
That’ll show them.
You don’t have to be an English major to have a blog. Keep that in mind.
You clearly left the bleach on your scalp for far too long…
S.T.F. UP!!!!!
By the way…that SHUT THE F… UP was for that R.F person with regard to editing….who cares!!!!
It looks great! It’s been over a year since I last dyed my hair, and before that it had been about a year (I like to go dark in the winter), does anyone know if I need to strip my hair first before attempting this? I was going to go buy a box of blonde, just to do the ends, but I don’t want orange… ya know?
Vanessa’s hair looks great, but overall this is not good advice; without a little more knowledge of the process, at least a percentage of the people who try it this way are going to end up with green hair.
When you lighten hair to almost platinum, one thing is that you can’t use an ash-tone dye on its own to re-darken it; you have to balance the green in that dye with a red filler. (Better left to a salon if you’re not extremely experienced with home color.) This is a major caveat that readers of this article need to understand before they try to follow the same procedure.
Also, it’s better not to follow up bleaching immediately with dyeing if you can help it. Some of the bleach particles can hang out in your hair cuticle and interfere with new color (also, if you leave the bleach on too long, you will strip the cuticle and your hair won’t actually take the dye, so lightening as little as possible to get the look you want is best). There are some other considerations, too (like, some dyes are best used on dirty hair, some are best used on clean hair).
If I were going to follow this set of instructions, I’d plan a weekend at home, do the bleaching on Friday night, and wait until Sunday for the dyeing. :)
PS — I realize you’re not recommending an ash-tone dye per se! Mostly it’s just that other readers need to know that it’s probably not a good idea to use one if they try to do this.
I would not follow this advice also for the following reason:
why dye your entire hair twice, it’s really unnecessery damage to the hair.
Also: the prossedure freaks me out, it not easy to dye only your roots by yourself and it’s really admirable for the article-writer to have manage that without experience of dying her own hair. Which I have.
i would recomend, having done the dipdye/ombre thing to first put a non permanent colour of choise, like brown in the example. then ask a friend to bleach the ends of your hair. Protect your clothes with a towel (you can put foil under you hair also) and let your hair be out on the towel if possible, that makes it easy to apply for your friend. To get the gradual look start off with the ends and then move up to where you want the ombre to begin. So you can let the bleaching reach different amount of time on the different levels so there will be a sharp start of the lighter ends. so since you are starting with ends they will be lighter. Depending of your hair colour and how sharp colour difference you desire you can buy a strong or less strong bleaching.
(sorry for misspelling)
1. You are gorgeous.
2. I was really wanting to try this so hopefully this weird dark dye in my hair stops messing things up lol