How to Easily Blend Grown Out Roots

I have the classic natural blonde dilemma. I was born with platinum hair that darkens a tiny bit each year. As I got older and my grew darker, it became harder and harder to resist dying my hair light blonde again. My mom forbid me to dye my hair for years because she told me that once you start, you can’t stop. Of course, I didn’t listen to her. After years of nagging, she finally relented and allowed me to get subtle highlights in my hair. Throughout high school, my parents were paying for my highlights, so I was basically forced to listen to what they said. I stuck with subtle highlights and long layers, but inside I was dying to bleach my entire head. I didn’t want natural blonde hair. I wanted platinum blonde hair. Well, I went off to college, started paying for my own highlights, and slowly but surely inched my way towards platinum.  I was so happy to finally have my dream hair color, and then four weeks later I realized I had disgusting roots and would have to pay nearly half of my paycheck to solve the problem. Needless to say, this situation quickly started to become annoying. I didn’t have the money to get my hair colored as often as I needed to maintain the color, but I also couldn’t stomach having six inch roots for months at a time. After I moved to California, I finally came to my senses and decided to listen to my mom. She was right, as usual.

I went to my hairdresser and asked her what the best process would be to gradually transition back to my natural haircolor with the least amount of damage. She recommended adding lowlights in my natural base color to gradually fade out the highlights in addition to softening my roots. By adding a few extra inches of my natural base color at my roots and adding the lowlights, I eased my hair back towards natural blonde. Luckily, the ombre look was just starting to get trendy in LA, so my transition earned compliments rather than strange stares. If you’re a natural blonde, did you go through the same phase as me?