Help me decide what to do with my hair colour. Highlights growing out.

[ThatDirection]

My natural hair colour is a light to mid brown. Quite cool in tone. The highlights I usually have are a mixture of warmer blonde and ash blonde. Over the first lockdown the colour grew out well and I enjoyed watching my own sporadic white grey 'highlights' appear. I regret having had the colour redone in July because she didn't do a great job and I've ended up with quite brassy yellow highlights, with not much of the ash blonde ones, and now it looks dreadful growing out.

I didn't manage to get to the hairdresser before the 2nd lockdown and then did not fancy going in December. Now I don't know what to do. My natural hair colour is looking very dull.

My options are to put on an ash blonde toner or get a dye to colour it all over. If I put an ash blonde toner on, will that just change the colour of the highlights and make no difference to the dull brown? My other option is to get an all over dye from esalon or Josh Wood. Will that be better than just buying a dye off the shelf?

And if I decide I want to go back to having a few ash highlights on my natural colour, say in February, will we be back to step one in trying to achieve that highlight shade or am I back to step one anyway since my hairdresser messed up the ash highlights last time? I might not want to go back to so much blonde anyway, perhaps just a little at the front to blend in the greys at the front.

How do I get the shade right when doing an all over colour? How do I know whether to stick to ash browns or go for something warmer? I'm guessing what suited me when I was young won't suit me now at mid-40-ish.

Any pointers please. I'm so indecisive I need someone to tell me what to do but I don't want to spend Christmas with my hair looking like this!

I think we need to see a picture OP

I would do your roots with a cool toned light brown. Majirel 6.1 maybe. Pull it down some lengths of your hair. Rinse then use a toner on existing highlights. Wella colour touch toners are good you need something with a blue or purple tone to banish the brassiness. Both of these need to be mixed with peroxide - they aren’t box dyes but are great products your hairdresser would use but you can buy from
Amazon. NB I’m not a hairdresser but have done my research and know what works for my hair.

Be wary of an all over colour. Once on you then have to either maintain the roots or work out how to break up the demarcation line as it grows out. Especially if you have some natural silver highlights (aka grey). You don't have such a demarcation line with highlights so may be better to stick with them?

I got rid of some increasingly cheap looking highlights by just using a box dye but leaving it on longer over the highlights and it came out pretty well. I don’t have all that many greys though so effectively Imwasnkust dying it back to something close to my natural colour. I’ll probably go back to highlights in the summer but it’s quite nice to have a change

Thanks for the input. I can see there is no easy fix. I'm thinking against taking rash action and making an appointment for January.

In the meantime, would a brown toner do something? Would it tone down and blend in the brassy blonde so it is bearable over Christmas? And if so can anyone recommend a good brand /shade?