I'm going to dye my hair 'grey' - colour experts please!!

[garlicbum]

Yes, I'M SURE! I've spent all day on a diy crash colouring course, but am going to lose a lot of sleep if I don't ask a grown-up for advice I can't afford to get it done at a salon. I'm telling myself that posting here will bring answers so i can go to bed! Hope someone can advise ...

This is turning out to be a long post - my anxiety's showing! Will put it all in the next posts so you can skip it if you know the answer

Here goes.

Situation:

I'm late fifties. Hair used to be blonde (level 7 or 8) but has darkened & greyed over the years. It's now iron grey, about 50% white, but I colour it with "Natural Baby Blonde" which is a light neutral blonde. It looks ashy because of my whites - or natural highlights, as I choose to call them

My skin tone is pink, but also a bit sallow. I have blue-grey eyes. When I used an "Ash Blonde" box colour it looked dreadful, but I also look grim with red hair. So I must be on the cool side of neutral, is that right?

Ambition:

Clean white hair with silver & grey lowlights. These are what's causing my problems!
I like this, this and this.

Possible solutions:

I can bleach the hell out of it and use white (violet) toner. But that'll make it too samey, and I'll keep running out of toner when it goes yellow.

I can bleach in highlights, then use grey (blue-violet) toner. It might not work and, again, there's the problem of relying on temporary colour.

Use one of the ultra-light box dyes, like John Frieda Extra-Light Beige or L'Oreal's 10.21 Pearl or 10.1 Ash. Then highlight over that with a froster. But will that just look like an '80s blonde, rather than assertively silver?? Argh!

I kind of hoped I'd be able to find out how to do it properly, using a Majirel mix, but can't find out what shades I'd need to use.

Doesn't anybody do permanent grey & white colours??!

Shades:

I know I'll have to use a 'silver' toner to keep it frosty (assuming I ever get to frosty) but don't really know how to identify the tones I need or should avoid. Is 'Pearl Blonde' too pink, for example? Should I be looking to blue-based or purple-based shades?

Am and need advice!

I would avoid doing it proper grey. It is hard to get it shiny looking, it tends to look a bit grubby.

You will need to pre-bleach, possibly twice.

Then you need to bleach your hair to the absolute max - I find Live Colour XXL Absolute Platinum works or whatever the Loreal Feria one is that's really light blonde.

You will need to pre-bleach, possibly twice.

Then I would use Manic Panic, Virgin Snow. If you use it about every 4 washes, your hair stays white.

After all that, though, it is easier and not much more expensive to get it done professionally. Bleaching your hair white is not great for it and it's easy to leave huge chunks undone which don't exactly blend in.

It is soooo bad for your hair.

I used a lot of bleach, and then toned it with 'White Shade of Pale' by fudge. It looks ever so slightly liliac-y but makes it look much whiter.

It was a lot of upkeep and I had to do conditioning treatments every week. And my hair still didn't like me afterwards.

I would save the pennies and go to hairdresser. I am crazy with my hair but I would never do that to it again

I am not sure I can help, but my hairdresser did my Mom's hair for my wedding. She has grey hair, pink complexion and blue eyes, like you. And like you, she has always dyed it blonde. the hairdresser added lemony highlight color to the grey, and it looked great! Now, my mom's hair was more pure white grey than iron grey.

I'm not sure if that helps at all, I'm far from an expert!

The more I think about it, the more I just think go professional.

You end up spending so much time on it and buying so many packets of dye and toner and stuff that it's just not worth it and then your hair might turn into a big old orange mess.

Oh dear. Thank you very much for the ideas & advice :)

It looks as though I should definitely save up ....

.... but I'll probably have a go anyway

I'm only taking it from a 9, on the top layers, to a 10. My main stumbling block is how to dye the darker hair to shades of grey that look nice on me (I'm not putting this very well) as well as whether the lights will go white. I'm taking all your advice on board and will post results - over a couple of weeks, I'm afraid, as I'll need to let my hair rest in between chemical assaults.

I'm gritting my teeth for a few purple-head disasters.

Moxie, was your mum's hair ash blonde before your wedding? I'm wondering if her hairdresser used yellow to counteract the violet in 'ash' shades.

If so, that gives me a clue - I think I'd need a blue to neutralise mine

Garlic, I want to say she was very weird blonde. It was a hard color to describe!

@ weird blonde! I'm fairly certain I'll be a few shades of that before I get it right ...