The Journey to Healthy, Low-Maintenance Hair

The Healthy Hair Journey

Rewind four years ago and you’d find me in a salon chair every four weeks bleaching my roots and possibly toning it pink. I’ve always loved to experiment with hair color, but by my late 20s, my hair wasn’t having it anymore. My hair became brittle, weak and even more frizzy. I was losing chunks of hair and I looked like a hot mess.

I then dyed it darker so I could skip the bleach and I just could never find the right color that looked best with my skin tone when I tried this. And I thought–what about embracing my natural hair color? And I started to give my hair more breaks between coloring and highlighting until I eventually realized that balayage was the right approach for my hair. I went from bleaching my hair every month in 2015 to only getting my hair colored twice in 2018.

Hair Goals

With meeting my goal of only coloring my hair twice in 2018, my hair is healthier and longer than ever! And now with 2019, I want to focus on keeping it strong and looking shiny and healthy. I had a quick consultation with Beth Nash at Douglas J Okemos right before my appointment last week where we walked through my photo inspiration for hair color and what exactly I liked about the hair photos like the actual color, tone and placement.

After learning I wanted to keep the ombre color and not lighten it up too much more, but freshen up the blonde and balayage, she had a great plan. She added a semi gloss color to my roots/natural hair to add more richness to the color, weaved in baby lights around my face and brightened up the blonde at the ends!

If you’re in Lansing, I highly recommend Beth for color! What I love about Beth is her talent and skill, experience and just how quick she is. You won’t waste an afternoon with her, she’s efficient with her time (and her guests’ time.)

The New Routine

I used to only let my hair air dry and now that it’s more manageable and healthy–and I realized blow drying my hair isn’t as awful and time consuming as it once was, I blow dry on the regular and most of the time now, that’s it. I blow dry and I’m done. I might add in some loose curls, but I’m still lazy with my hair.

I’ve shifted my products a bit too. I no longer need the Biolage gelee (still use if I let my hair air dry), but I use UNITE 7 Seconds conditioner spray first followed by Aveda Emollient Finishing Gloss. Once I blow dry, I might spritz my ends twice with Alterna Caviar Dry Oil Mist. But Beth also used Aveda’s Speed of Light spray on my hair and I loved how much it sped up the blow dry. I also love the Aveda Invati Advanced Exfoliating Shampoo–this has been great for my scalp and helping my hair feeling cleaner.

A couple newer products I’ve incorporated have been dry shampoo and hair texturizer. I primarily use Living Proof Perfect Hair Day dry shampoo to absorb oil and sweat from my roots and Kevin Murphy Bedroom Hair for a texturized, tousled look (I spray before I curl my hair and a little after.)

I also took Nutrafol in 2018 to help with hair growth. Definitely something to consider if you want to grow out your hair.

Sweater from Gap | jeans c/o Elodie Boutique | mules from Sparrow Boutique | hat by Lack of Color

Hair by Beth Nash

Photography by Matt Thompson