I’ve been hearing through the grapevine that the ombre trend is over. Excuse me? I hate trends, and finally I found something I really like. You don’t get to tell me it’s over. No, now is the time to take this shit to the next level. Ombre Extreme!! Let’s do this thing.
You recall from my first post about how to achieve a reverse ombre that I put black on the ends. Well, it turned out great. I absolutely love it, and I think I’ll keep it pretty much forever. And today I’m going to expand on that. First up, a simplification of the process on the bottom. This is a complete revision and you’ll never have to read my first article again, except it still has pretty pictures.
The second time I did the black on my ends, I wanted Bea to do it because she’s a hair genius. I’m always afraid of missing things in the back because I’m not an alien and I don’t have eyes back there. Well, she surprised me, even for her. She did the whole thing in under five minutes and didn’t spill a drop. She also didn’t use the brush, or separate my hair into blunt chunks by layer like I did. As it turns out, that was totally unnecessary. In fact the whole thing is just so easy I feel kind of stupid now for over thinking it so much before. She took a small piece from the front, saturated the bottom, and just pushed the dye up with her fingers. Then she went around my head, going purposely uneven so everything highlighted and swirled beautifully, and that was literally it. The only thing to know about this is you want the bulk of the dye to be at the bottom so you’re not dragging very much up with your fingers. I just slap a little glob on there, make sure it’s really worked in, and just slide my fingers up and down up through the transition part to carry it through. Easy. You won’t even believe it. Retouching my hair as it fades is now crazy quick and painless. And after about 5 times doing this I’m still using the same jar I started with.
Seen here with hair flairs, for added color and sparkle.
Now you may also remember me saying I don’t use bleach, because my hair is already blond and bleach kind of scares me. So to get my bright red to take I was dying the roots very light blond as an alternative. Now, this is the shitty part about bright hair upkeep. Most hair dye is just one process out of the box, but these bright veggie colors need bleach/blond, and then color is a second step. And let’s face it, I’m lazy. Often I dyed my roots blond and because I didn’t want to dry and dye and wash my hair a second time in one evening, I just left it. And left it. And left it. Soon I had some pretty crazy blond roots going on, and my hair was three colors. And actually that was pretty awesome. The color itself wasn’t bad, but me and light hair just don’t mix. It’s not me, and I needed to tone it down a bit. So then over the fall I started dying it copper. At first I didn’t love it, it was just too orange. But it always faded to a very pretty warm golden blond. And there I have it, the perfect tri-colored fire ombre. My laziness actually paid off and now it looks like I put in even more effort than I did before. I just keep touching up the roots, and don’t go there when I touch up the red part.
Ta-Da!
So enough about me. How can you do this? Let’s take this into the perspective that you will be keeping with the light-to-dark theme instead of the other way around. This way is a LOT less damaging. If you hair is already light to begin with, you can take it any color from there. To do your roots just make a bunch of partings and paint them with your color of choice and your tinting brush. Go as far down the length as you want, you’ll be covering it up with the darker colors after and extending it down a bit may even help the gradient effect because hair dye is rarely opaque. Take the second color, making sure it’s complimentary and a bit darker, and dye from your preferred starting point downward. It transitions smoother when you brush upwards in a sort of rounded “swooping” motion instead of plopping it on and brushing down the usual way, which would be very abrupt and unforgiving on unevenness. Then do it again with the third color either with your brush or the way I described I was doing my ends earlier. Most likely of course you’ll be doing this in three separate steps instead of all at once, and it’s ok to not even do it all in the same day. It might even be four steps if your root color doesn’t come in a box and you need to lighten it first. Suddenly this style doesn’t seem quite so lazy anymore, but I don’t call it “ombre extreme” for nothing.
Hellooo profile picture.
Or you could sort of simplify and do it like me, if you’re patient and a little shy about wanting to do your roots something extra awesome (bonus – if you’re going white, the heat from your scalp processes bleach quicker, so your roots will be easy). This is also good if your hair is too dark/already damaged to handle the lightening and you want to start fresh with strong virgin hair. Choose the middle color as your base and do that all over. Then do your darkest color on your ends. Live with that. As your hair grows, touch up your roots not with your main color but with the lighter root color. Most likely this will involve lightening and either keeping it that way or dying something else on top later that day or the next. Have fun thinking of all the pretty colors you could do. White-purple-black, white-blue-black, blond-teal-royal blue, blond-pink-purple….this is going to be so much fun. Pro tip: Use lip liner, eyeliner, or eyeshadow to tint your eyebrows to match your hair. Next up for me, pink-red-black “flower” ombre!
Like a boss
You NEED to show me pictures if you do this. Let’s show them something fresh and keep ombre in.
Skirting The Issue 