After lots of research of places around town that do a good grey/white I came in person to show New Do my current hair and ask if it would be possible. It is naturally brunette but had been growing out a red for about a year. I know going light after red can be hard, if not impossible, so I'd recently had some pieces of blonde ombre done to the bottom to see how it took and it looked great. If it wouldn't have been possible with my current hair, I would have had no problem letting it continue to grow out.
But white is such a drastic change that I'd even bought a cheap white costume wig to see if it would look okay, and it looked so good I decided to go for it. I was excited when Janine sat me down, looked through my hair, said it should be fine if we left a little root. I was scheduled with her for (senior stylist) the next week, but then got bumped down to James (stylist) a few days after that. No problem, I was still excited.
When I told James what I was going for he seemed really skeptical and kept trying to press me on why I wanted to go white. After going over what I wanted to achieve he started the dye process, and we looked at pictures on the computer for what he was going for. Every time a blonde picture came up I redirected him to a grey/white. I absolutely did not and do not want to be blonde. It doesn't look good on my skin tone and I don't like blonde hair for myself. I said multiple times variations of the phrase, "as long as its not blonde".
Hours later after the foils came off I looked in the mirror and was almost unrecognizable. The hair was a yellowed, straw-thin, insanely damaged "trashy" blonde on bottom that tapered off into a burnt caramel color at the top and had several long jagged inches all around of my old color at the roots. It was Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan blonde. It looked insane. James couldn't quite understand that it was the color blonde, and not white, and I had to point to several white things around us as a comparison to what the color "white" is. He kept telling me that there were different levels of "warmth". This is blonde! Blonde is not some subtle variation of stark white, it's its own color!
Janine came over to consult and they wanted to dye it again to see if it would get any lighter, but it was so yellow that I couldn't see it ever getting to the color white, only going more crispy blonde. At one point she even said "unless it's white I just don't think she'll be happy". Are you KIDDING ME?? That's why I came in, that's what I'd shown pictures of, that's what I had been saying for the past three hours.
I said I wanted to just go dark instead because bleaching it further would be more destructive and was most likely not going to get me anywhere near the color I had come in for. After arguing with me for ten minutes James agreed and I ended up going back to a red, which took almost no time at all. It looked really good leaving the salon and for the second day, but when I washed it a few days later to let the color set it started to fade extremely fast. My hair used to have beautiful natural curls at the bottom and now it is 100% frayed and damaged the whole way through, and it feels disgusting to the touch. Every time I wash it the areas where it was bleached get a little lighter, so now it is an odd light brown in places while the roots remain saturated with the red put in by New Do. It's like the bleach has prevented the new color from setting. My boyfriend hates it. I'm embarrassed to be in public because it looks like a rat's nest and I'm too afraid to get it dyed any other color because of the current level of destruction.
SO UNHAPPY with this salon- if white was not possible then you should have said so. Now my hair is irreparably damaged and I don't know if I will ever get the same curls or texture I had back. It will take years to grow back out and look anywhere close to normal. I completely regret coming in to this place. read more