Ah-tea : How I did my Red Ombre at Home

I just gave myself a red ombre at

home. This is something I've wanted to do for awhile. I was inspired by the beautiful creator of LEHAPPY.com

My hair isn't as light or red but here's how I achieved this at home.

This is what I started with, a light brown/dark blonde hair.

I bought a dark red hair dye by Loreal.

Disclaimer: I will never buy this dye again. When I washed the color out after dying it the color bleed out in the shower so long the water got cold and about 3 showers later it was still bleeding red. It even dyed my white towel red! And it seems like the color is washing out so I'm probably going to re-dye the red. So annoying!

Ugh anyways...

I started by I mixed the dye as the instructions said and brushed my hair. I dyed my hair in three sections, the bottom middle and top. I used a clip to hold up my hair. I started with the bottom.

For the bottom layer I wanted the red to not go down as far as the other sections, so I picked where I wanted it to end and started to cover my hair with dye starting at my roots and brought it down to where I wanted it. I just used my hands and gloves for this.

Next I let down the middle section from my clip. And did the same process but brought the red down just a smidge further.

I have layer so I dyed to whole top section red.

I had a lot of red dye around my face and on my neck so I wet some toilet paper and wiped it off before it dyed so I wasn't left with red skin.

I left it for about 30 minutes and washed it out (forever) and used the conditioner it came with. The end result end up like this.

I left it let this until the next day. I was ok with how this turned out but I really wished my ends where lighter. So the next day I bleached them. Below is what I used to bleach. It was leftover from when I went blonde and had to touch up my roots. If you have never bleached your hair at home I recommend letting a professional or a skilled friend to do it for you. Bleach isn't something I recommend experimenting with because it is damaging and unless you are a professional the outcome could be a disaster.

I bleached my hair similar to how I did the red, in three sections, but this time I did it in pieces. I used the brush pictured above and brushed my ends. Some pieces I went a little higher then where I originally had it mostly because I noticed there were places where I missed or I just wanted more variation. I didn't want it to look like a straight line between the red and blonde. I pre-cut some pieces of aluminum foil to wrap small sections that I bleached.

Then I did the middle section the same way.

I left the top section alone since that was dyed all red and I wanted to keep it that way. I let the bleach sit for about 20 mins then I checked it and here's how it looked. (This didn't photograph well, i doesn't look like much of a different but there was definitely a difference)

Next I took out all of the foil washed it and blow dryed it. After I still wanted more of a faded look (this process ended up taking much longer than I originally thought). So I used a dye I had from went blonde by Jazzing called Creme Soda. I used this just were the red and blonde meet. I did this pretty haphazardly. Really no rhyme or reason just trying to created a better faded ombre.

Then I tied the ends of my hair in a plastic bag and left it for 20 minutes then blow dryed it for 10 minutes. Then I washed my the ends and blow dryed it one last time. The last and most important step was conditioning. I used this from organix.

And after this enduring this, what ended up being a long process this is the end result that I am happy with. I'm glad I put the effort in bleaching the ends and creating a more faded ombre.