I had medium brown hair that I wanted to lighten to light brown. Based on all the good reviews I decided to try Grace Salon. My appointment was set with Nathan, and I brought a picture of myself at about age 10 to show him the color I wanted. Nathan was very nice, but appeared to be quite inexperienced. I stressed two things: 1) I don't care what needs to be done to achieve the lighter shade - do whatever it takes; and, 2) I don't want the ends of my hair darker than my roots. After about 3 hours, I walked out of the salon with dark brown hair with a few funky colored highlights.
That evening I emailed the salon stating my dissatisfaction with my color. Trish contacted me the following day. After playing phone tag (no fault of the salon) I spoke with Trish, who was very nice and seemed quite knowledgeable. After speaking with her, we both agreed that I should come back to correct the color.
I came in about one week later, and once again Nathan was my colorist, although this time Trish was there to guide him somewhat. He applied a bleach shampoo mixture and after the rinse, my hair did appear slightly lighter (although no where near the light brown I had initially requested). They decided that a toner should be applied, but Trish stressed that the toner should not be applied to the ends for any length of time as the ends will get too dark. I also reiterated that I don't want ends that are darker than the roots.
After rinsing, it appeared that my hair was once again dark, but I thought maybe it was just because it was wet (prior to the toner, Nathan dried sections of my hair so that we could see the color). Nathan diffused my hair slightly, but it was still quite wet when I left the salon.
Well, once my hair dried completely, the color looked horrible. It is now medium brown at the roots, and the rest of my hair is a dark redwood color all the way down to the ends, which are the darkest. And the few highlights initially applied now run from the crown for about 3 inches and then disappear into the dark brown/red color, so that I now have highlights only at the crown. Very weird.
Most of the time I color my own hair, but because I wanted to go lighter, I thought I would leave it to the ""experts."" Well it just didn't happen at this salon.
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