That Time I Wanted Red Hair and It Turned Neon Pink

I experienced a salon horror story in 2011 that made me not trust “professionals” for a while. The quotation marks are because… Here in the Philippines, a lot of salons operate and employ stylists who are not licensed or didn’t even go to beauty school. Shocker, I know.

Anyway, I wanted to have red hair in time for my then-employer’s holiday party. My band was performing, and I wanted to look awesome. Even though I had been coloring my hair by myself and occasionally going to salons to have it dyed, my lack of how hair dyes work was against me. Long story short, a dude at a cheap salon in Manila bleached my hair to a very rare level 10 in one sitting. I didn’t know at the time that a level 7 or 8 is enough to get a nice red shade.

He also used a regular bleach and let it touch my scalp, and then wrapped my head in clingfilm and put me under a dryer helmet (or whatever it’s called). It stung like a motherfucker. It fried not just my hair but also my scalp! I had minor burns that I still suffered from nearly 8 years after. Because my hair became too light, the pure red dye came out pink! You know, like Gwen Stefani during the Return of Saturn era. It was… okay. But it wasn’t what I asked for.

I’m assertive enough to let people know I’m not satisfied with their work, so I complained and got mad. The dude then layered another batch of red dye and added “pink highlights” by sectioning off some bits of my pink hair. I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the day. I was shaking and yelling, but honestly looking back I could have sued him and the salon. It’s nearly a decade ago and on occasion my scalp would still be flaky. My hair has thinned horrendously. Thank goodness for hair and scalp treatments I discovered. A lot of them are affordable but some are pretty pricey, but I think of them as an investment as I’m trying to get my scalp/hair health back.

It wasn’t until I went to a Tony and Jackey branch near me, when my stylist at the time, Rose, told me that the most bleach should be applied about half an inch (approx. 1 cm) away from the scalp. It didn’t affect how my red hair turned out – I didn’t get any obvious roots when she did that because the red dye she put over also had developer and lifted my virgin roots enough. Who would’ve thought, right? So from then on, either I go to a salon for bleach or I would learn from stylists (in real life and online) the dos and don’ts of bleaching and coloring.

So yeah, as visual aids, these photos were from all the way back in November 2011! Observe the high quality of my BlackBerry 8520!

Sure he “fixed” it, but! I ended up with chemical burns on my scalp and a bad case of dandruff that lasted for years. I didn’t know on the day itself but it manifested over the course of the next months and years, and it’s the price I paid for having it “fixed” for free at the same salon on the same day.

Lessons learned: Don’t just go to any salon, research if they’re experts on hair color. If not, there’s a possibility you’d end up suffering the consequences and get what you paid for. Do a bit of research and know what levels your hair would need for the colors you want to achieve. Part of the reason I let this happen is because I didn’t know my hair wasn’t supposed to be that light. Had I known, I would have stopped him then and there. Also, nourish your hair and scalp, inside and out – proper nutrition and scalp/hair care! Don’t be too stingy when it comes to your hair. I know it grows back, that “it’s only hair,” but I’ve had a few hair tragedies in my day and it really affects you even if you don’t want to admit it. I remember going to that salon because their rate and promotion for my hair was ₱4,000 (most high-end salons at the time would charge 2-3x that, maybe more depending on several factors. Use me as a bad example of what not to do when changing hair this drastically 😉