GRAY HAIR ENVY | HOW TO GET GRAY HAIR UNDER RM80/$20

Hey there! I recently changed my hair color and I thought I'd share with you guys how I achieved it here on my blog. Just a little disclaimer, I'm not a professional hair stylist and I'm only showing you guys how I did my hair and how it turned out for me!

So as you can see, I now have fabulous gray hair!

I've been having some serious gray hair envy feels from everyone on Instagram that has gray hair. Miyake, CL, Brian See, Ariana Grande, Chanyeol, Baekhyun...almost everyone had gray hair!

Although gray hair was quite a popular hair color last year, I only decided to get it recently. I know, I'm a bit slow to following the trend. The main reason why I'm so late is because literally EVERYWHERE I went in Penang, there was someone with gray hair. It felt very mainstream and I didn't want to seem like...a basic bitch tbh.

The trend has died down quite a bit now, so I decided to go for it! One of the main reasons why is because of Nyane Lebajoa, one of my fave people on Instagram. She had a darker skin tone than the people above and seeing how well it worked for her made me want to try it for myself.

Plus, I've never tried anything NOT brown/blonde. The furthest I've gone is red/maroon, so I really wanted to try out gray hair before it was too late (aka internship T.T.)

PS. I also made a video for this tutorial! Please do support me by watching it, and if you like it or find it useful, do thumbs up and subscribe!

Without any further ado, here's how I got my gray hair!

To achieve gray hair, I had to do two things:

1. Bleach

2. Color

You have to bleach your hair because putting the gray hair on black/dark brown hair just wont work. For this whole process, I used only 3 products:

To bleach my hair I used U.S.A Kelter's Blue Algae Color Developer and Dust Free Bleaching Powder. The reason why I selected using this bleach instead of a regular drugstore box bleach is you need REALLY light hair to achieve gray, and one bleaching will not be enough.

For my dye, I used Gatsby's Natural Bleach & Color Aqua Silver dye. I could have bought a cream dye from the hair shop but I decided that the gray I wanted seamed achievable with the Gatsby one and that I didn't really need to splurge that much on the dye since Gatsby's quite a reputable company. If I ever I dye gray again I'll try other dyes.

Overall the cost for the products are as follows:

The bleaching itself is so much cheaper than doing it in a salon because you do it yourself (or in my case my brother hahaha) and you don't have to pay for the stylist's service fees/talent fees. There's pros and cons to this, but if you have experience in dyeing your hair or you know someone who can, then you're set! 

Other items you'll probably need are gloves, a comb/dye brush, a mixing bowl and a weighing balance to weigh the powder and developer.

My hair isn't virgin hair, meaning it's been dyed/bleached before. Bleaching won't work the same on me as will on someone who has black/untouched hair. From previous experience while bleaching my friends' hair, people with untouched hair usually need only 2 to 3 bleaches to achieve a level 7 or 8.

I decided to bleach my hair to lift it to at least a level 8 or 9. I had to bleach 6 times until I thought that the color was light enough. I didn't bleach my hair all on the same day. Instead I let it "rest" for a few weeks so that I wouldn't damage it that much.

PROPORTIONS

When I bleach other people's hair I usually did it in a 1:1 proportion, meaning I put the same amount of powder and developer in the bowl and mix. I learned from my brother afterwards that according to Guy Tang, you should mix it in a 1:2 proportion, meaning if you put 30g of powder, you put 60g of developer.

I definitely suggest not bleaching all in one day. I suggest intervals of AT LEAST one week before you bleach again. One week is actually too fast, but if you're chasing time, I suggest you to go at intervals of 1 week and in that break time just smother your hair with lots of serums and hair care products because you're hair's going to need all the nutrition that it can get.

I've been a blondie for a few months and the last bleach I did was actually pretty nice! Here's what it looked like (with a few filters on top of it, don't judge me hahaha)

I mixed the cream and the developer in the Gatsby kit and applied to my hair for about 40 minutes and voila! Here's the final result:

With and without flash

I noticed that under some light my hair appeared kind of purple-ish. I checked in the mirror and some parts were patchy and looked purple-ish.

Oh well~

Again, here's me with a bit of filter and photoshop XD

People around me are always saying they have dry hair when they dye/bleach their hair. I sometimes experience this, but never more than a day. Its because usually after I do something with my hair, I soak it in my argan oil hair serum until I get my silky smooth hair back.

As for fading/maintenance tips I have a few things to say. Above I mentioned that my hair kind of appeared purple, but after a few washes it faded into a true gray. HOWEVER, over washing your hair can lead to the dye washing off. As you can see below, my hair was a mixture of purple, gray and BROWN.



 I think the brown came out because I did not tone my hair with a purple toner after bleaching. The reasons I didn't tone is because the only toner I could find was through my classmate Sarah and although it could have been useful, I didn't have enough money to buy a tub.

To combat the brassiness of your hair from coming out, I recommend using a purple toning shampoo if you can find one. If you can't (like me) just don't wash you hair as often or just go for another round of gray dye if you want. I don' really mind how my hair has faded, but I think I will redye it in a few weeks time. I just want to kind of "heal" my scalp and my hair now.

And that's it for this post! I hope I was helpful and informative. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to comment down below! I reply to comments really fast hahaha.

Green was also a popular colour last year, as seen on the fabulous heads of 4minute's Jiyoon, EXID's Hani, PrincessMei and BTS's Suga, and my brother Euri actually tried green out as well!

After gray I might try purple out...any other colour suggestions?




Thanks for reading!