Blonde Hair Style Photos and Advice

Tips For Choosing, Achieving and Maintaining Your Color

A blonde hair style can range from light platinum to dark golden blonde. This page provides photos and descriptions of different blonde shades. Get the best blonde for your buck!

If you've had trouble getting a nice result when lightening your hair, read the tips here and follow the links.

Hair coloring is a science. It's complicated... not so complicated that it can't be figured out.

But if you're flying by the seat of your pants, with little or no hair coloring knowledge, it'll show in your hair color results.

Tips | Choosing a Shade | Maintenance | Photos | Related Pages

Blonde Hair Color With Professional Results

PREPARE YOUR HAIR
For best results (and to avoid common color mishaps), make sure your hair is ready for the color.

Minerals from water, chlorine from swimming pools, and build-up from styling products can all impede the haircolor formula's ability to do it's thing.

Use Joico K-Pak Chelating Shampoo before coloring to help eliminate these impurities.

Do you color your own hair? If so, you know that achieving the shade of blonde you want can be difficult. The color you see on the box is NOT necessarily the color you'll end up with.

Blonde is probably the most frequently messed up hair color. We've all seen enough amateur blonde hair styles with brassy roots and frazzled, white, over-colored ends.

Getting a natural looking blonde hair style is tricky. Most people's hair has a lot of yellow-orange underlying pigment. To achieve a very light blonde, the hair MUST be lightened to the pale yellow stage. That often requires hair bleaching, then applying hair toner to deposit the desired tone (i.e., ash, beige, or golden).

Keeping a consistent tone from the roots to the ends of your blonde hair style is also tricky. That's why so many people are walking around with "hot roots" (bright, brassy blonde near the scalp). Take the time to learn about hair color chemistry. The more you understand, the better your hair color results will be.

Choosing a Shade

For very fair skin, a touch of gold in your blonde shade can help to warm up your skin tone. Ash tones are great for those who have a reddish complexion as the cool hues will help neutralize the redness.

Caramel blondes work well for natural brunettes, especially around the face where the lighter caramel shades will draw attention to the eyes. Olive skin tones benefit from a more neutral shade of blonde, nothing too warm (golden).

Maintaining Blonde Hair Color

Keep the brassy tones out of your blonde hair style by using a color depositing shampoo and conditioner. The conditioners work the best because they don't contain cleansing agents and can be left on the hair for long periods. The longer they're left on and more often they're used, the more pigment is deposited onto your hair strand. My favorite pigmented shampoos and conditioners are made by ARTec.

Blonde Hair Style Photos

Consider both the level of darkness and the tone of any hair color you choose. I'll specify both in the example hair color pictures below...

Click to enlarge photos
Use this virtual hair style program to try on hair colors before you commit.

	Platinum blonde hair style (Level 10 -- this could actually be considered level 11 or 12, but the traditional color level system only goes to 10, so we'll stick with that.) This shade can only be achieved by bleaching and toning the hair. It's best for shorter hair styles because of the damage bleaching hair to this degree causes. The ends of long hair have been around, exposed to the elements for at least a year or two. They'd look awful after being so severely bleached.
	Ash blonde hair style (level 10 with level 6-8 lowlights) A combination of light blonde highlights and ash toned lowlights create a nice multi-tonal blonde. This is the best way to use ash tones. An all-over ash color can look greyish, but breaking it up by only using the ash for lowlights looks great! Details on using foils to highlight and lowlight hair.
	Yellowish-blonde hair style (level 9) A light blonde with a slightly yellowish tone. You'll notice the yellow if you enlarge the image and compare it to the ash or platinum above. This is about as much yellow as a blonde should have before it starts looking brassy. If you look closely, you'll see that the yellow tones are broken up with platinum blonde highlights.
	Neutral slightly golden blonde (level 8) An all over medium dark, slightly golden toned blonde. This shade works very well with a warm skin tone. Gold tones are always better when they lean toward the neutral end of the spectrum. Too much gold can look brassy and artificial. When choosing a hair color (if you're doing it yourself) ALWAYS take into account your underlying pigment. If you choose a golden blonde off the shelf and apply it to your hair with an orange-yellow underlying pigment, you'll end up with a VERY bright, brassy gold color.
	Golden blonde with light blonde highlights (level 7) The highlights are nicely placed and the tone blends well with the golden shade of the darker color. Just a few foils in the top layer of your hair can add great impact and work well to break up a solid color. Details on using foils to highlight and lowlight hair.
	Sandy blonde hair style (level 7) This dark blonde compliments cooler skin tones. It's very neutral, but without the gold in the photos above. If you opt for a color like this, make sure the cut has some texture and personality. Otherwise your hair could look a bit drab. A few skinny foils 1 or 2 shades lighter would be a nice addition to break up this color and add some dimension.
	Multi-tonal blonde (level 7) This color has a bit of everything. Foil highlights were added in every one of the above mentioned tones. It's a bit too much. If this were my client, I'd recommend we add a level 8 color gloss over top which would not affect the darker tones. It'd add a bit more darkness to the lightest pieces and create more harmony. She'd still have a multi-tonal blonde, but it wouldn't be so reminiscent of a calico cat. Stick with a maximum of three colors when foiling for a multi-tonal effect.