Adventures in home hair dying, any gurus out there?

[anothercrackatit]

i have that kind of murky blonde hair that goes really blonde on top in the sun. As we headed into autumn it was growing out and I decided on impulse to match it all up using L'Oreal lightest natural blonde. It worked really well but was so light it needed redoing every 10 days and so I decided to try to tone it down a bit using California natural blonde which was much yellower. Needless to say, it came out rather ashy although thankfully not khaki and so I dyed it back again. At this point I realised that I'd damaged my hair quite a lot and started shoving everything possible on it to get the condition back...

It started growing through and I thought I needed to sort it out and so I put on a semi-permanent in sweet honey in the hope of toning in (?) a bit of red to avoid green in the future. I hope this is making sense! It is now a slightly ginger-ish blonde and in so much better condition but the regrow the issue is here again. Do you think that I could put a permanent golden light blonde on it without disaster?

Thank you for your help

I wouldn't recommend adding gold on to a gingery tone. You're just adding more warmth. If the regrowth is your issue you need to get the depth of the box dye closer to your natural. So a darker blonde or hi lights so that it's a smudged regrowth rather than a harsh line. Balayage would be nice as you could have a bright blonde with deliberate regrowth. If you are ever masking regrowth as opposed to toning, a semi isn't great in blonde as it can't lift light enough and ends up with a brassy look on any natural hair. Anyhow, I would look for a level 8 (normally first number on box) with a beige tone.

Thank you MoBro, that's great. I'll have a good look at the 8s and see what I can find with a beige tone