I Have Orange Hair + Post-Dye Treatment

Finally I have my hair dyed. After eyeing the unicorn hair trend for quite a while, I finally decided it's time to jump into the crazy-hair-girl squad lol. Even though my orange hair is not really in the "unicorn" color theme, but you get what I mean right? 

Preparation & Dyeing Process

I've been wanting to dye my hair with unconventional colour since few years back, however I have few reasons that kept delaying me from executing that thought:

1. High maintenance: I need to allocate extra $$$ to maintain the colour, hence why I decided to only dye bottom-half of my hair so the maintenance doesn't need to occur often. Cheapo, I know. #UrbanPoor 🙈

2. Super damaged hair: Being Asian with naturally dark hair colour, I knew I needed to do many bleaching session to prep my hair so the dye can show properly on my hair. Bleaching is super damaging to hair, and it made me cringe to think how bad my hair would be after so many bleaching sessions.

If you're new to hair-dye world (like me), before dyeing your hair into light, bright colour, you need to make sure that your hair colour is lighter than your desired final colour. Think of it as colouring with watercolour paint. If you want to use pastel pink, it can only shows if the paper colour is lighter than pastel pink right? For instance, the pastel pink won't show at all if you use it on dark coloured paper. 

In general, there are 10 level of hair colour:

Source: Pravana website

My natural hair colour falls into the level 5-6. On my first trip to the hairdresser, he bleached my hair 3X and the result was still on level 7. Meanwhile, my desired hair colour (bright orange) requires my hair to be on level 8-9 to make the orange properly shows. My hairdresser told me to do some hair treatment before continuing bleaching my hair and he told me to come back in two weeks time.

3X bleaching result

The picture above shows how my hair looks like after 3 sessions of bleaching. Still pretty yellow right. Two weeks later, I came back to the hairdresser to bleach my hair again until at least it reached level 8. On my second trip, I had 2 more bleaching session before my hair finally turned to level 8.

Unfortunately I didn't take proper picture on how my hair looks like after a total of 5x bleaching, but here's my Instastory screencaps on how level 8 bleached hair looks like. Please pardon my bare face 🙈

Once my hair is prepped, finally I can put the colour in! I used Pravana ChromaSilk in Vivids Orange. It's recommended by my friend who previously dyed her hair purple using this, and she said the colour is really bright and beautiful. I purchased this hair dye from Instagram shop @pravanaindonesia. Their service is really good and they will let you know what bleached level you need to have before you can dye you hair with your desired colour.

This hair dye is a pre-mixed dye, so you don't need to mix the cream with any other product like developer or conditioner, and you can apply it directly to (bleached) hair using rubber gloves and hair brush. My hairdresser used hairbrush to apply it to my hair and then wrapped it in aluminum foil and left it for about 50 mins before rinsing it. As you can see from the pictures above, I almost used finished the whole tub, even though I have short hair and only dyed bottom part of my hair. I think if you have long hair, you will need few more tubes to dye your hair completely.

And here's the end result!

At first I was surprised to see how bright it is haha. I literally feel like my hair is on fire 🔥 Actually I wanted to dye my hair coral using this Pravana Pastels in Too Cute Coral, however the seller said that the pastels will wear off much faster than the vivids, and by using vivid colour it eventually will fade into pastel too after few time washes.

Until now, I have washed my hair approximately 6x but the colour still stays the same haha. The first 2 washes, my hair still bled and the shampoo foam looks like carrot juice lol. I can't wait to see the transformation from bright colour to pastel. I'm already thinking once it fades perhaps I will layer it with magenta to achieve peach/coral colour hehe.

Post-Dye Treatment

After the party ends, you still need to clean away the mess right 🙈  Now, bleaching damages your hair. Bad. Like, super bad. It basically pulls your natural hair colour and meanwhile in the process , it somehow took away your hair moisture too. After my first trip to the salon, my hair felt drier than normal (duh) but still bearable. I used lots of conditioner, hair oil, and hair treatment from The Bath Box called Dancing hair oil. You can read the review of this product here. 

I think those treatment products help, but after my second trip of bleaching and dyeing, my hair got even more drier! Like, seriously dry. I feel like The Bath Box Dancing hair oil is not moisturizing enough to treat all the damages, so I tried another product: Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil.

Same like Dancing, I use the coconut oil as pre-hair wash treatment. I apply the oil from scalp to hair ends, and focusing more on the dry hair ends, left it for 30-60 mins, and then washed my hair as per usual. I find the coconut oil is much more moisturizing than Dancing, and not to mention, much more affordable too. I purchased this coconut oil from Elevenia, but I think any other cold-pressed organic extra virgin coconut oil will do the same too. 

After treatment, my hair feels much more moisturized and soft and becomes easier to comb. It's still not as soft as before, but again, I think it takes time to restore my hair's health to its previous pre-dye condition.

I hope this post is helpful if you're considering to dye your hair with crazy colour, if you have any question just comment below and I'll be more than happy to answer your question :) Thanks for visiting, Loves, talk to you soon 😘