Crappy hair colour- what are my options?

[LoobyDop]

My natural colour is lightish mousey brown. It now also has grey streaks round the edges. For years I had half head foil highlights done in various caramel, honey type shades. It was occasionally a bit stripey, and occasionally she got too carried away with “lightening it up around my face”, which for some reason she was very keen on, but it was always more or less ok.
Then I switched to a local salon because I was tired of spending half a Saturday schlepping into town and back. And the guy there very nicely said that the highlights were dated and he could do better. So he spent FIVE HOURS painting balayage on it and stuff, and I have to admit it looked amazing, but it cost £300 and five hours and I’m not the Princess of Wales.
He left the salon anyway, and I told the new girl I wanted low maintenance, no obvious regrowth and fairly close to my natural colour. So she has just been “putting toner through” and that has been ok, if a bit meh. Except this time, where clearly the bleach the guy used has grown out too much to still have an impact, and the whole thing is far too dark brown, and one flat colour, and I’m really not happy with it.
I don’t mind going back and telling her I’m not happy and asking her to sort it, but what do I ask for? And is there in fact any option other than dated highlights or spending an absolute fortune or all-over dark brown, if your starting point is medium mouse?

Tbh I think you’ve got the options there. A more natural and modern highlight will mean balayage and will be expensive.

I guess you could ask her to bleach the lot, tone it to blonde and do a root shadow to camouflage regrowth. But I’m not sure you’d like that? It would be easier and cheaper though, if your bleached hair has grown out, and if the toner is not permanent.

Following as I have exactly the same problem and feel stuck in a rut.

Photos for context. It actually looks darker than this irl, these are quite flattering.

well applied foil highlights don’t have to look stripy and dated - you won’t get the dark to light effect you get with balayage (known as flying colours in the 90s BTW so not new) - it’s more all over but if you have 2 to 3 colours properly blended with your natural colour it will not be stripy and will look pretty natural. Often more material than balayage I think which only actually looks natural if it’s very subtle.

balayage will take longer but it usually lasts a bit longer as it’s darker at the root - 5 hours is a lot though.

anyway what I would do is a review search of local hairdressers and find a highly recommended colourist - which technique they use is less important than their skill.

Unless this girl comes as highly recommended (doubt it) I would just chalk this up to experience. If you really can’t find anyone local spread the search into town and just alternate appointments so the local person can just follow the pattern.