Posts with tag HairDye

Due to the sagging economy, many women are shunning the salon in favor of at-home hair color for a number of good reasons. It's easy. It's quick. It's cheap. But with trying something new usually comes with a hairy mistake or two. Here are a few professional tips to ensure that you skip the mistakes and make it straight to healthy, shiny hair land.

What's with all the red heads anymore? We all know that only a low 1 – 3% of the population is natural so what's got everyone reaching for the dye box?

Just taking a stab at it, we're guessing women are:

• Tired of blonde and brunette stereotypes
• In need of change
• Looking to turn heads
• Loving the fiery and fierce redhead stereotype

Fierce? Fiery? Maybe we should jump on the red bandwagon!

Check out these redhead celebs in all their sizzling hot glory.

We know we sound like a broken record, but DIY hair color is a risky proposition. It seems simple when you read the package, but in real life people leave chemicals on for too long, pick the wrong color or mix processes that should always, always be separate, like bleach over henna'd hair.

If it's at all possible, we recommend -- STRONGLY, yes, we're yelling -- that you go to a pro to get your hair dyed. This goes double if you make a mistake coloring your hair yourself. Do not try to fix it at home, get help!

We practice what we preach and see our colorist regularly. In fact, it was under the dryer at our hair salon last week that we read about the latest home craziness: Color Oops Home Color Remover.

This week over at Stylelist they have some advice from the pros for at home hair coloring. We acknowledge that going to the salon can get pricey, and if you must do your color at home these are good guidelines to follow. But we must warn you: please use caution and restraint on the slippery slope of do-it-yourself.

We're talking about the scourge of Sun In.

We looove long, dark, sexy eyelashes. Love them, love them, love them. We have no qualms about layering on the mascara, or even using false lashes should the occasion call for it. In fact, if we had the funds, we would probably be devotees of eyelash extensions. However, when we read about dying our eyelashes, we were a little surprised.

Used to be, that if you wanted to look really hot -- at least in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition kinda way -- you needed blond hair. It makes sense. After all, some (admittedly dubious) studies have suggested that blonds look younger, and men around the world have been lusting after fair-haired bombshells for decades.

But it seems times are changing. With news that (fake) blonds are more likely to develop lymphoma, and billionaires are overwhelmingly more interested in marrying brunettes, there's plenty of reason to doubt the dye job you might have considered a few years ago.

Plus, it's all too easy for an attempt at creative hair coloring to look lame and/or incredibly tacky -- as even celebrities like Jessica Simpson can't keep from going some creepy-looking shade of orange.

So is it better to work with what you've got? Or is there still a part of you that can't resist letting a colorist go to town on your coiffure? In a new poll released today, the ladies at StyleList pursue this pressing question: Two-toned hair -- love it or hate it? Head on over to vote.

Hey look -- Lindsay Lohan has blond hair again! I'm sure you're aware that the 21-year-old super-drunk has been down this road before, but there's never been any real public consensus on how LiLo should be coloring her coiffure. So what do you think: blond or brunette? Check out the photos and then take the poll below.

So here we are, on the brink of a brand new year -- what better time to try a new look? That's what Kareim Ugarte was thinking when she stopped into her local salon, and asked to have her hair color changed from brown to blond.

Only that's not what happened. Instead of the blond locks she was after, Ugarte wound up looking like a junior high kid with a bad bleach job, complete with an orange and yellow coiffure. Oh, the humanity! But what's worse, way worse, is that she also wound up in the emergency room -- with chemical burns.

Ugarte told a local reporter that "It was with blisters and a lot of liquid coming out of the areas," which probably looked about as gross as it sounds.

The culprit was a JC Penney's Styling Salon -- who not only injured their customer (allegedly), but then charged her $150.

I smell a lawsuit.

Over the past few days, multiple people have asked me how I've managed to keep the pink/red in my hair vibrant for so many months. It's a bit tedious to explain each and every time, so I thought it'd be cool to not only share all that I've learned, but to put my knowledge about the process in a handy post, so that I can just share the link whenever I'm asked again.

And please feel free to share your own hair color expertise in the comments! It's always good to learn more, right?

Blonds may have more fun, but do they have more health problems? Well, if they aren't naturally blond -- and who among them is -- the answer is that they might.

In the New York Times Thursday Styles section, Natasha Singer addressed the recent report in the American Journal of Epidemiology which linked hair dye to an increased risk for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (in Larry David speak, "the bad lymphoma"). Singer's piece tends to wind back and forth between suggesting that "Yes, hair dye is dangerous" and "No, hair dye is safe".

But I can appreciate the way she meanders. After all, weighing risk against benefit is not an easy thing to do. When you consider that the risk factor for developing lymphoma is fairly low (1.19 times more likely), it's hard to say that coloring your hair is a significant threat to your health. Smoking, for instance, makes you 10 to 60 times more likely to get lung cancer. Put in perspective, coloring your hair doesn't exactly seem like risky behavior.

Pulling a Jessica Simpson and dyeing your locks from brown to blond to Cheeto's orange, on the other hand, is definitely risky behavior.