The Brunette to Blonde Transformation

I will soon be able to answer the age old question of “Who has more fun: blondes or brunettes?” If you haven’t noticed, I have gone through a hair transformation over the last several months after deciding to stop coloring my hair and return to my roots (literally!).

A little background. I am naturally VERY blonde and loved my hair all through high school. My mother and brother both share our distinctive light locks and it set me apart, which I enjoyed. However, when I got to college, I started to get comments like “You’re so smart for a blonde!” or “Your hair doesn’t match your brain.” Being 18 and wanting to project a more professional image, I decided to do the one thing every girl does in college: color my hair. I was going for a light brown, but as anyone who has worked with box color knows, you never get quite what you are going for.

So began the hair color era, and for the next 13 years, I dutifully colored my hair at home every 3-4 weeks to keep my “skunk stripe” of blonde roots at bay. The color became darker and darker as the years went by since color on top of color only gets darker, until eventually I had essentially black hair. I was in a bit of denial about how dark it was, but it was BLACK.

I always said I would keep the dark hair as long as it felt like me, and perhaps it was becoming a mother or simply finally being at peace with myself, but I decided about 6 months ago to begin the process of coloring my hair back to my natural blonde.
I started the process with my amazing hair colorist Brittany from The Blonde Leopard (she’s amazing if you’re in the Austin area!) in December, right before the holidays. After consulting with Brittany, we decided to go slow and pull out as much color as we could then highlight over the top until my hair was as light as I wanted. I will be honest, I cried on the way to that first appointment. Changing something so drastically, especially just after having a baby was a big change for me, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

After one appointment, I had this beautfiul, reddish brown color. I loved it and it already felt more like me. 6 weeks later I went in again and had more lightening done.

This time to a hint of blonde but mostly medium brown.

The final appointment we did TONS of highlights and cut quite a bit of my hair off to try to get the darkest pieces out. I will never forget Brittany drying my hair and realizing I was blonde again!

My hair is still just a bit darker than I used to be, mostly on the ends where the color didn’t lift as well, but as I grow my hair out, this pieces will get trimmed out.

I am IN LOVE with my hair now. I feel so much more like myself and so much lighter and brighter. This has been quite the journey, and I am so grateful to finally be in a happy place with my hair. I also have so much more inner peace, knowing that no matter what color my hair is, I am exactly who I am supposed to be. So we’ll see if blonde me has more fun, but I think I already know the answer 🙂