For as long as I’ve been dying my hair, the tone that I come back to time and time again is red. For some reason, having a tinge of red in my hair just makes me feel more like me. And it’s for that reason that I love just love how transformative red hair can be. My redhead inspirations include Eleanor Tomlinson (As Demelza in Poldark obvs) Stacey Dooley, Emma Stone and Julianne Moore.
Though, as is always the way with anything that looks beautiful, it’s so hard to maintain if, like me, you’re not a natural redhead. Coloured red hair fades notoriously fast. This is because the red hair molecule is much larger than other colours, therefore, it doesn’t penetrate the cortex of the hair as deeply as other colour molecules would, making it wash out more easily.
Keeping my red hair bright and bold is an ongoing battle. And so I thought I’d write about how I try and maintain my coloured red hair as it does fade easily, but not quite as easily as if I wasn’t tailoring my hair care to help keep my red hair lively.
The red hair colour that I personally use is 6R Light Auburn from Nice ‘n’ Easy, I use this particular product when I need to do my roots which are naturally dark brown.
I then use this semi-permanent colour for topping up my red shade in between permanent colouring. I also use the following three hair care products whenever I wash my hair to try and keep those red tones nice and bright.
The 45 Days Total Color range from Revlon includes a salon professional shampoo with a variant geared to all hair colours. Of course, I have the ‘Brave Red’ variant which helps prolong the vibrancy of red hair in every wash.
The formula is sulphate free and includes built-in heat protection, UV filters and antioxidants. The formulation is nice and light to work into wet hair and does not leave my hair feeling dried out.
I first stumbled across the Wella Red Recharge products when watching Melanie Murphy’s auburn hair transformation video.
I decided to pair the ‘warm red’ radiant up with the Revlon shampoo and I love how soft, shiny and vibrant my hair looks following a treating my hair to this product. The Wella conditioner is infused with red pigments and helps keep my hair looking lively – No dull tones to be seen here.
I’ve included this product as I’m currently using it up, though for a similar effect my favourite colour conditioning shampoo is this one from Superdrug as I find it lathers much better than the Colour Vibe one from Boots. However, the colour refreshing premise of both products is roughly the same.
I use these products once a week as a leave-in colour, just to keep the ends of my hair saturated in colour. The ends of my hair are bleached so they tend to lose their pigment first, products like these are great for quick wins before you head out for dinner, but don’t have time to dye your hair.
I love colouring my hair red, but it definitely requires dedication, time and upkeep. I hope you’ve found this useful to see some of the ways I maintain my red, colour treated hair.
