When you have dark hair, every trip to the salon is a high-stakes gamble with bleach, and for her, that’s resulted in a year-long saga of brassy tones and good enough results.
It started with a quest for a platinum peek-a-boo block that never quite lost its orange hue, and it has culminated in a balayage that looks more like a DIY ginger experiment than what she was hoping for.
Now, she stands at a crossroads: Is she a victim of a hairstylist who can’t deliver, or is she a client with expectations that no amount of developer can meet?
Within the last year, this woman has gone to a certain hairstylist three times, but she’s really unhappy with how this girl has been coloring her hair, and she’s about to see her for a fourth time to fix the mess she just made.
The first time she went to see this hairstylist, she asked for a block of bleached hair on the underside. Her hair is naturally extremely dark, and she did expect that one section to be platinum blonde.
She didn’t think she would get the results she was looking for in just one session, as it’s tough to go from one end of the color spectrum to the other.
After the hairstylist was done, her blonde section of hair was super brassy, so they made another appointment to get it brighter and blonder.
She wasn’t upset, as she anticipated it would take more than one try to get to super blonde. But during the second appointment, the hairstylist couldn’t get her hair any blonder.
She thanked her hairstylist for her efforts, and since it wasn’t that ugly, she lived with it for six months and didn’t change it out.
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“Fast forward, I want to go ‘cowboy copper’ – just stunningly beautiful red/orange and keep my natural hair at my root so it’s easy to grow out,” she explained.
“I schedule an appointment with the same stylist, we agree to do a balayage and put copper over it – perfect! Well, when she was blow-drying me, I pointed out that it’s more ginger than copper, and I’m a little disappointed because the bleach block I had looked very brassy and orange, rather than copper, like the color she put on me just filled that hair.”
“She totally understood and said that she would be willing to schedule another appointment to get it more copper and like the photos I had sent her. I said sure, and scheduled for the day after.”
She did send her hairstylist tons of photos to show her the exact color she wanted, and yet, she thinks her hairstylist fell woefully short of that.
Her hairstylist has had to move that appointment multiple times, as she keeps getting headaches and currently has a fever. She’s trying to be sympathetic to her hairstylist’s health issues, but she’s upset.
As she’s been waiting around to see her hairstylist, she’s been thinking about how she doesn’t want to pay her to correct the color of her hair.
“I paid $255 USD for the balayage and incorrect color, and after the very first time with the bleach block, I did pay for that second appointment because my hair is ridiculously dark, and [it] wasn’t her fault for not getting bright blonde,” she clarified.
“But this time?? This feels like she just got my color wrong, nothing to do with me or my hair. So would I be the [jerk] if I don’t pay for this correction appointment that unfortunately keeps getting rescheduled??”
Ok, so I have very dark, almost black hair, and I’ve spent years as a platinum blonde, so I know it’s unrealistic to expect a completely different color like red or blonde if your hair is that dark.
It takes multiple sessions to achieve a lighter color, so no, her hairstylists didn’t mess up; she just has expectations that aren’t grounded in reality, and she sounds like an exhausting client to deal with.
I’m not sure why her hairstylist didn’t tell her she couldn’t give her that cowboy copper in just one session, or that section of blonde either.
Maybe her hairstylist was avoiding disappointing her or letting her down? Anyway, I just don’t understand why she keeps going back to get her hair done by someone she’s unhappy with.
She needs to set realistic standards for how long it takes to change your hair color and also find someone she’s not going to complain about, so we have two different issues at play here.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
