Please advise me on what to do with my hair colour, I’m so confused!

[Poppysball]

My natural hair colour is brown but over the past year or so I’ve been getting more greys. I’ve tried all the following methods to try and cover them:

Highlights with brown tint followed by regular root touch ups in the tint. Result - tint looked orange as my dark/grey roots started to come through. Hair ended up a multitude of colours as soon as roots started to show.

All over brown to try and get back to my ‘natural’ colour. Hated this although DH liked it. Too dark, made my face look pasty.

Some highlights added to the all over brown. Better but they looked so bright and stripey!

Half head of highlights & a toner. Now it’s too ashy blonde and almost looks even more grey in places! Doesn’t suit my skin tone and makes me look washed out.

I’ve tried several hairdressers and I just despair. All I want is not to have brown hair with grey roots. Is it so much to ask? When I go to the salons they talk to me in hairdresser speak about tints, high lift, bleach, toner, highlights, lowlights. I don’t know what they all mean and I’m nevee sure how it’s going to turn out until they’ve done it and it’s never quite right!

Please please can anyone else who has brown hair, going slowly grey tell me what you do to cover the grey? Preferably at a reasonable cost as having highlights every 6 weeks is just not an option for me. I do like the balayage look - how is this done and is it expensive to maintain?

I need to get the latest attempt sorted out as it is just too ash blonde and doesn’t suit me so I’d be very grateful for any suggestions.

Whatever you do your roots will still come through so if you have balayage you’ll still need root touch ups. I ended up using box dyes at home now 30years later I’m embracing my grey (white) and growing the lot out. The grey suckers have won.

Same here, I want a cool dark brown, I hate the copperyness that always comes through!!

You need dark roots with balayage highlights to stop you looking washed out. Then do your own roots every 3-4 weeks - go the hairdresser every 3 months to reach the root areas you can't reach. The highlights only need doing 2x year.
To keep root area cool you need a base colour with ash and violet - e.g Wella Koleston 6.17 or 5.17 depending on how dark you want to go. When you ask for highlights, ask for them to be beige champagne not ash to avoid that grey look.

JMAngel1 this sounds great - how would I achieve this though from what I have now?

I'm naturally dark and I use a box dye to dye it back to its natural colour. I need to do mine every four weeks to stand any chance of concealing the grey. I am at the stage where I am seriously considering just letting it go grey because I can't be arsed fighting it any more.

Fatted what make of dye do you use? I’ve never done it myself as worried about getting the colour wrong but I imagine it’s a lot cheaper! And I seem to always get it wrong at the hairdressers anyway!

I would have highlights with the brown running between but have the top layer of your hair brown so the highlights only show when your hair swished around.

You could then buy a touch up spray tk keep you going between salon visits and would only ever need your roots done to maintain it so shouldn't be as expensive.

Like this...

images.app.goo.gl/UAah7vnssp5ohjrf7

Very similar to balyage but different, easier technique.

Thanks Rarfy - how do I get the right brown though? They never seem to match it to my natural brown so then as it grows out it looks so different, usually with an orangey red tinge!

Tell the hairdresser you want a cool brown not warm. What's probably happened is they have put warmth into it because it was blonde. But they should be able to do that by prepigmenting it and then putting the colour of ur choice over the top.