From red to rose gold - home hair colour change tutorial

I’m pretty well known for changing my hair frequently and I’m quite brave when it comes to trying new looks, particularly new colours, and will dye my hair at home even when it’s a dramatic change, but do visit the hairdressers once or twice a year too for something completely different.

I like bright or bold colours and I really like blended hair tones too - why be just one hair colour when you can be a few?!

Ombré hair do is quite practical as it can help with root regrowth, and a couple of years ago I first tried this at home myself and shared a tutorial of the end result.

Having updated my hair colour at the weekend, taking my deep red locks to a brighter palette of rose gold / peach, I thought I’d share how I did it in case you’re brave enough to change your colour at home.

Starting colour: With all hair colouring, it’s important to consider the history of your hair and the dyes you have used previously, as this will impact on the end result. I’ve changed my shade several times, often from extremes, and recommend the B4 colour remover kits you can pick up in most shops like Superdrug or even ASDA. I’ve found them to be pretty gentle when taking my hair from black back to the original base colour.

However, this time I wanted to work with the colour I had and use this to create a multi tonal look. I like reds and enjoy having hair that is colourful but felt my previous shade was a bit too dark and much like the weather right now, I really wanted things to lighten up. I had used a vibrant red box dye last myself, but underneath this was a much more purple toned red that had been done at a salon. Reds are notoriously hard to maintain as they tend to loose vibrancy with each wash but then they are also hard to completely remove from your hair, as the warmth stains the hair shaft.

I decided to use Garnier Olia plus plus maximum bleach lightening kit to lift the colour then the new Deep Rose shade from the same collection to create an interesting shade with some depth, so the end colour wasn’t a brassy orange and would hopefully have some pink tones to it.

This was really effective in lifting my plum / red and I watched as the tones got lighter and lighter. The maximum time with this is 45 minutes, and advice is to use it on lengths first before working through the roots and first 6cm or so of your hair. I know bleach is a scary thing but I have found that over time, home treatments like this are much kinder and if you follow the instructions, monitor your hair and really let the conditioner do its thing, you should be pleased with the results.

My tip would be to blend the bleach from tip to root, considering how strong you may want the ombré effect. I wanted my ends to be lighter and roots darker, with a blend of colours all the way through.

Once I had completed the lightening and dried my hair, I then applied the Deep Rose shade. I worked this through the roots and mid lengths but left the lower half of my hair until around 20-30 minutes later; I wasn't sure how the colour would take and didn't want it to darken during the development time. I worked the remaining mixture through and left for a final 10 minutes or so - but think I could have left it for longer to let the pink really sink in.

Regardless, after conditioning my hair for a good half hour then drying it, I could look at the final result. Much like when I had my hair turned red (and much shorter) by a hairdresser three years ago, and loved it, my new colour is a blend of vibrant red / orange, with a subtle pink tone to it, and fading into shades of peach. I'm calling it rose gold, because I like rose gold, as it's not orange and it's not pink - it's somewhere in between.

It's really hard to take a photo that actually captures the shades fully, as it is really much more vibrant with lighter highlights than any of these photos has picked up!

Doing something like this yourself can take a bit of bravery and always test a small area first if you want to see how something will develop. This technique and my advice is from my own personal experience and knowledge gained, rather than a professional guide and it isn't a sponsored post in any way, but I hope it's useful if you are thinking about being bold with home hair dye and creating your own custom colour.