Dark brown (dyed) hair with lots of grey - can I go blonde?

[Gensola]

I have naturally very dark brown hair but am now very grey and dyeing it every three weeks. Around the front and the temples it is white and the hair resists dye, plus it grows back really quickly. I can’t keep on top of it. I think I’m now so grey/white that blonde would be less maintenance as the roots wouldn’t show through so quickly. But I’m not sure how easy it would be to achieve, given I’ve been dyeing it brown for years. Any advice much appreciated.

I have naturally dark brown hair and have been easing into grey via blonde! It's much less maintenance than dying roots brown. Albeit more expensive when I have it coloured.
I have highlights and initially my hairdresser did a balayage which lightened it overall. I have it coloured maybe twice or 3 times a year and cut Inbetween.

I kept dyeing my greying hair, for many years, very dark brown/black. It ended up having layer upon layer of dye, and I got sick of keep doing it. 4 local hairdressers refused to strip the colour, so I bought B4 hair colour remover from Amazon, and used 2 boxes of it to get rid of all the black. My hair went various shades of orange and was very dry, but then I started colouring it blonde. The grey roots don't show up so much now, and I use a lot of conditioner on my hair after washing it.

@Beamur when you first started going lighter did you get highlights and balayage? At the moment I have dark brown dye all over and about 2cm of white/grey regrowth, what I’m wondering is how to avoid dyeing the grey hair dark, so I can dye it blonde once it’s long enough but I can’t face just growing it out as it looks awful for so long.

They and track down a good local colourist. Find someone who's highlights look good and ask them where they get their hair done. This was me, now a balayaged dark blonde with highlights to break up the regrowth. Might take a few visits to get where you want to be and a bit of a make-up adjustment bit definitely doable.

I started off with a few highlight la and then went gradually blonder. But it was so expensive to maintain and was more effort than I could be bothered with. My hair went quite dry and didn't look good.
Ive gone back to brunette and just do root touch ups at the moment.
Are you willing and able to spend the time and money on upkeep?

Took nearly three years but between balayage and the lockdowns finally my hair is great condition. I did go for the grey though because blonde would still have resulted in dark roots

I did I was fed up of dying my hair every 6 weeks . I'm graduating to grey.

I did but I had a lot cut off; asymmetric Bob to start with, now a pixie. I don’t notice any grey at all now and roots don’t really bother me as I can’t see them much as I always push my hair forward when I dry it.

It will be a very expensive first appointment though and long for colour correction (4-6 hours).

You can start going lighter by mixing your shades, so for instance, if you're using a hair colour that is dark brown, it probably starts with the number 4 or 5 e.g. Garnier nutrisse 4.3. The first number tells us the depth, the second (and third) numbers are the tones. So 4 = dark brown, 3 = golden tint

Buy the next shade lighter, which is a higher number and mix half of each tube, e.g. 1/2 tube of 4.3, then 1/2 tube of (the lighter) 5.3, with the bottle of developer. Save your two 1/2 tubes and other bottle of developer for the next time.

This will take some years, but you will subtly go lighter. Avoid going over the middle and ends of your hair if they are not faded, or you will undo your work and get a dark build-up. Eventually, you will either reach a dark blonde that you actually like, or you'll be light enough to need less bleach for this pre-blonde stripping process, which can be very damaging.

Like you I have dark brown hair with very grey (white) hair around the temples, and now apart from the middle cm of hair, my whole head has a lot of grey. I'm only 40.

I have gone blonde before and while I liked it and eventually got to an okish shade (takes a while to go through the gold blonde phase before your can get to a more ashy colour) I hated the strip of dark roots, the cost and the length of appointments at the hairdresser!!

For now, I use professional hair colour (my hairdresser told me what to buy and how to mix and apply it) every 3 weeks, with every third time an appointment so it can get done professionally.

I will go blonde again soon, probably will start next year, but I hope to get to the point that my roots are mostly grey, so I can colour it myself in between highlights at the hairdresser and have no (or a softer) dark root.

I did... I had sunlightened bits on some of my hair so reflected that through the rest as highlights but it got very grey at the front and stayed dark brown at the back as it grew out. At one stage I had a few hideous results when the hairdresser didn't do as asked and proper tears when a hairdresser put grey highlights through my hair because she said if she put blond in it I would look like a 40 a day smoker with nicotine stained hair. It's been 'fully grey' for about 8 years now.. lots of conditioner, careful blow drying and good cuts help but I still grieve my chesnut brown hair.

I went from dyed dark brown to natural grey over the course of about 18 months. Started with light brown highlights, and gradually went lighter and lighter until I was at a point when I could grow out the natural grey with minimal pain! Happy to post some photos if it’s helpful.

Just don't do what I did and do a DIY job! It's hard to get the colour out when hair has been dyed dark multiple times. Platinum roots and orange everywhere else is not a good look, and nor is crispy hair (I'm an idiot haha 😆)

Hats are your friends whilst growing it out.

I've been gradually colouring mine from medium brown to light brown to dark blonde. It shows a little bit where the dye line is, but not too badly, particularly through the summer when it all lightens a bit naturally anyway.

It took me a year to go from very dark brown to blonde. My hair is, and always has been, shoulder length or longer, and the grey hair was coming through thick and fast. It needed tint on the roots every 4 weeks or so, and I was fed up with it hardly ever looking nice. My excellent hairdresser suggested I try blonde. Every visit, she put a handful of foils through the hair, some dark blonde, some pale brown. After a few times, she started adding medium blonde, then lighter. If I look back at photos taken a year apart, the change is obvious. But incrementally, it wasn't much change each time. You need a really good, careful colour specialist, who will work at your speed, and NOT encourage you to chop it all off to make it easier/quicker (as happened to a friend). Good luck!!

My hairdresser is a colour genius. She managed to do it in a way that it never looks like it's badly grown out even when I left it 6months between colours. She put in lots of very fine highlights with more in the areas I was going grey which blended it in well and lightened it overall - the balayage made it blonder at the ends which balanced it out overall.

Balayage was so helpful during transition. My hair was white streaks, grey and almost black. I now use the blue shampoo from the hair dresser to avoid the yellow effect. Going blonde isn't an option

Watching with interest.