How To Dye Your Hair Green (Or Other Wild Colours!)

When you become a Mom, there are few expectations the conservative society seems to have of you. No more listening to heavy metal music? No more black t-shirts and tight jeans? No more wild hairstyles?
I don't think so.
What I wear and how I choose to present myself should not affect my parenting capabilities. It is not doing any harm to my child or anybody else for that matter, so I do not see why I should not continue to dress the way I did before I became someone's Mother.

For the longest time, I have always been experimenting with my hair and putting it through all sorts of torture treatments, including various hairtsyles, cuts, colours, lengths and umm, accessories:

My ever evolving hair

My personal take is that, it’s only hair anyway right? And whatever it is, it can grow back! Plus you can also opt to wear a cap/ hat/ beanie/ bandana/ sombrero if you do end up regretting shaving half your head and dyeing it neon pink. 

Well, my most recent hair escapade is to have it dyed GREEN - why not right? Since that is a lucky colour for Taurus!). As I have dark Asian hair, it is absolutely necessary for me to get it bleached prior to getting any sort of hair colour dyed in, because if not, then you won’t be able to see any other colour besides black. Total pain in the ass and I am very envious of all blonde people out there, JUST because I really hate getting my hair bleached. It can really screw up your hair texture and ends up damaging it to a certain degree no matter how much effort you put into maintaining it (and trust me, I am pretty vain and have a meticulous beauty regime and my bleached bits are still a little “crunchy” sometimes. UGH).

Anyway, not wanting to blind myself, or bleach uneven patches all over my head, I got it professionally done at the hair salon.

Ola. I am a Biker Mouse from Mars.

Umm. Yes. So hawt. LOL! They had to bleach my hair like, 3 times to get it light enough so that the dye colour can be seen. This salon also carried Manic Panic hair dye and kept asking me whether I wanted them to dye my hair there instead, but the price they were quoting was enough for me to buy about 8 tubs of dye online if I were to do it myself, so, no thank you!

I ordered some wild hair colours from La Riche Directions from my friend who is a seasoned pro with bleaching and dyeing her own hair on a regular basis and eagerly waited for the shipment to arrive. Meanwhile, I was actually sort of liking my bleached bits.

Caramel Custard Pudding Milk Tea

So when my dyes finally arrived, I decided on APPLE GREEN for the first try. It was super simple to apply and actually smells pretty nice!

STEP 1: Shampoo your hair and towel dry it. Do not put in any sort of hair product. You can actually skip this step ONLY if your hair isn’t super greasy or has hair products in it.

STEP 2: Wear plastic/ rubber gloves and scoop some hair dye out of the tub and into another container (a bowl is ideal).

STEP 3: Squeeze in some hair conditioner (any kind) and mix well. Do note that the conditioner is going to lighten the dye shade a little bit, so just figure out the exact shade  you want by adding in more or less of the dye.

STEP 4: Apply the hair dye using those applicator brushes. I couldn’t find mine so just used a small comb. Worked just fine for me. You can get a friend to help you with this just in case you miss a few spots (like how I did and then had to go back and reapply it again the next day. Duh).

STEP 5: Put on a a shower cap or just clip up your hair and wait for at least 15 minutes. I left mine in for about 2 hours. Apparantly it is even safe enough to leave on overnight (for LA RICHE DIRECTIONS, as far as I know. Not sure about other brands, so please double check first if you plan on doing that!).

STEP 6: Rinse out with cold water (Pro tip: Warm/ Hot water makes your scalp greasy), until the water runs fairly clear. Use a Colour-Protector shampoo and conditioner for the next few washes to help make the colour last.

Dyeing my hair GREEN!

I’m really happy with how my green hair turned out! It’s actually a bit brighter than what you see in the picture, and some parts are hidden (if the wind blows and reveals the inner right part of my hair, it’s super greeeeeen).

Going to my daughter's weekly playgroup, I wondered if the other Moms would judge me and still want to talk to me. I was mostly met with positive comments and enthusiastic compliments. And I also noticed a few nervous side-glances. It's alright, I don't really care what some people have to think or say. It's their right to think I'm an odd "alternative" Mom, just like how it's my right to dress how I jolly well want to. To each their own, right?

I still have “Atlantic Blue” sitting in my bathroom, and as my current Apple Green is slowly starting to wash away as the weeks go by, I’ll probably mix it in on top of the green and see what colour comes out.

Lucky Green Hair for this Taurus Mommy \m/

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Do you think green hair suits me? What colour should I try next? Leave your suggestions in the Comments section and I may just try it next time! ;)