How To - Look After Pastel Hair

It seems pastel hair is a 'thing' now days, which I am most happy about. I love that it's more acceptable to be creative with our hair and achieving the pastel look couldn't be easier with the likes of Bleach London and others now being widely available on the high street and numerous YouTube videos showing us how.

I've had pastel hair on and off for nearly 2 years and whilst I love being able to play around with different colours and tones, it's a lot of bloody hard work. Pastel hair is a commitment!

You need to ensure firstly that you have a light enough base.  Anything above a level 10 / 12 in hairdresser speak or even better bleach.  The lighter and cleaner the base colour the better.

Depending on the porosity of your hair (how damaged it is and how easily it'll hold onto colour) will determine how often you'll need to re-touch your pastel.  I do mine once to twice a week as I like it quite vibrant most of the time.

I'd recommend using a good colour shampoo - Kerastase and Redken are always my faves and looking after the condition of your hair - the better the condition the better it'll hold the colour. Also don't be too scared of damaging your hair with the pastel shades as most of them are just dye mixed with a bit of conditioner, so no peroxide or harsh chemicals involved and if you're brave you can mix them yourself allowing you to control what goes into them and how bright / pastel they come out.

So far I've had pink, lavender and grey hair all of which I've achieved with either Bleach London or Directions by La Riche, I've dabbled in the odd one or two off the shelf from Superdrug, but found they didn't last anywhere near as long as the others and some left some dodgy undertones in my hair!

The easiest to maintain so far is the grey, I just leave silver shampoo on for about 20 minutes while I'm in the bath and voila grey hair. Occasionally I'll touch up my roots but that's about it.

So there it is, a quick pastel hair how to and aftercare.  I cannot stress enough the importance of being light enough to begin with, pastel dyes will not take on dark hair and you must have an even colour, otherwise you're risking patches, oh and it might take a couple of goes to get it even so don't panic - it did with mine anyway!

Happy pastelling!