☽ Hallo Liz ☾

I’ve had blue ombre/balayage hair for 8 months and I always get a lot of questions about how I maintain and look after my blue hair, so here is a little post with what I found works for me.

Blue hair dye washes out easily so it’s best to wash your hair less if you want to keep the colour in longer. Every time I wash my hair, there’s blue dye all over my shower floor. I generally wash my hair once a week. I have really oily hair but tip no 5 really helps with that! It’s also good to leave your hair for longer periods of time between washes to let all the oils from your scalp repair your damaged, bleached hair.

Using hot water to wash your hair can wash more colour out each time because the heat opens up the hair “pores” (not sure what the technical word is). I use cold water to wash my hair when the weather is warmer, and during winter I use luke warm water or cold water if I’m feeling brave.

Blue is a hard colour to maintain in your hair and it’ll wash out super quick if you use normal shampoo and conditioner. It’s important to use shampoos and conditioners that don’t have sulfate in them so that the colour stays in longer. A lot of shampoos and conditioners for colour treated hair still have sulfate so look for the ones that are sulfate-free. I use Joico color endure sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner.

Using heat on blue hair not only fades the colour faster, but is also damaging. Bleached hair is extremely dry and damaged and using heat will only damage it more. Try and minimise the amount of heat styling you do.

I have extremely oily hair and so I need dry shampoo to help me out on the days between washing my hair. I also like the texture and volume dry shampoo gives my hair as I’ve always had quite flat hair and dry shampoo really helps lift it, especially when my hair is dirtier. I’ve used Batiste dry shampoo for over 7 years and it works really well to absorb the oils on my scalp. One bottle runs out quite fast though and it can get pretty expensive to keep re-buying them. An alternative is Lush’s No Drought dry shampoo which is really inexpensive and lasts for a long time (and it’s friendly towards animals!).

This stuff is cheap and works amazing on damaged, bleached hair. I drench my hair in this when I go to the beach because the water strips a lot of the colour out of my hair and I feel like this acts as a bit of a barrier. It also really moisturises and restores my hair and leaves it feeling silky and soft afterwards. Rubbing coconut oil on the ends of your hair or doing a full on coconut oil hair mask is so restorative for damaged, dry, and/or bleached hair. Who needs expensive Moroccan oil?!

I hope this post was helpful if you have coloured hair, or are thinking about colouring your hair an unnatural colour. Blue hair is a lot higher maintenance than most colours, but it is definitely worth it. A little warning about blue hair is that when it is wet, it may rub off on whatever it touches. I’ve had it rub off on my white clothes when I’m out in the rain and on my pillow cases when I don’t dry it properly before bed. The colour does wash out though so it’s not a huge problem. Just bring an umbrella and dry your hair completely before lying in bed!

xx

Liz