What happens when you try to lighten your hair at home

In the never ending quest for beauty, women of all ages are dying, highlighting, low-lighting, ombre-ing, and lightening their hair.

Frankly, we all look pretty dope without all of these natural or chemical enhancements, but just for some summer fun, I tried lightening my own hair at home. I have naturally “blonde” hair, but many people have debated the legitimacy of my claims to blondeness. Once, an art teacher said I had “dirty blonde” hair, and a kid sitting next to me in that art class retorted with “You’re not really that blonde.”

Whatever the case may be, it could be lighter and with a sunny day and trip to Target planned, I was ready to make a change!

Here’s a picture of my natural hair:

According to my hair dresser, there is potential to lighten my dark blonde locks. In the summer, I get natural highlights. However this is 2016 and they’ve made chemical solutions for all of our problem.  I went to to see what kind of lightening products I could find. I chose “lightening” rather than a  dye because it’s less permanent (you know, in case it’s awful).

After some Target shopping and Amazon review scouring I settled on John Freida’s In Shower Lightening Treatment. According to the box, all you have to do is squeeze it out, rub it in, and rinse.

After letting the lightener sit in my hair for ten minutes and washing it out, I was left to blow dry.

I am pretty horrible at blow-drying my hair but at this point I was committed to success. Finally, the results were in.

Would you look at that? It was blonder! I was pretty impressed with this treatment and it smelled amazing. But, I was not completely satisfied. The DIY-er in me wanted to see if I could get better results with a DIY treatment. After consulting the Internet, I settled on lemon lightening.

To lighten your hair with lemons, all you need is lemons and a little oil (Olive oil is reccomended). I mixed the concoction together and, frankly, it was only a few more tablespoons of oil short of being salad dressing. I persevered, and I applied the salad dressing to my hair. To “active” the lemon juice, you have to sit in the sun for 1-2 hours.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have picked the hottest day of the week to do this. Beauty is pain!

After about an hour and a half, I finally caved and got out of the sun. My hair felt sticky and warm, and I couldn’t help but feel like I had made a hair and lemon salad.

But the results were in:

It was, kind of, blonder! The lemon technique definitely seems to lighten in streaks, rather than all over. But all in all, it was much cheaper than the John Frieda treatment and forced me to get some time outside.

Overall, I liked the John Freida treatment more because it didn’t make me feel like I was covered in salad dressing, but the lemon treatment was more effective. In the long run, if you want to go really blonde, you should probably just dye your hair because hair lightening really only lightens your hair by a shade at a time.

In regards to (somewhat)blondes having more fun, the results are inconclusive.