Before we get into it, there are two things you need to know: First, I actually went to Eikon over the summer, but based on the fact that I'm still suffering from the experience I had there, I decided I should share. Second, I have had my hair bleached ombre before and although there was a little damage, it was nothing even close to this experience I've had this time around.
I went in to see Heather. She cut my hair which turned out nicely and a week later I went back for colour. I wanted that lavender/grey ombre look that was pretty big over the summer. I will say that she did an excellent job PLACING the bleach - it fades really well and so if you are going for a mild bleach job, then maybe this is the place for you. However, I have medium brown hair and to achieve a pastel color, you need to bleach your hair to a platinum white blonde which is a part of the problem.
Since my appointment there, I learned through online research and asking other stylists that you shouldn't bleach for longer than about 45 minutes in one sitting. If you bleach for 45 minutes and the color still isn't lifted enough, you're supposed to send the client home and have them return in two weeks so their hair can recover a bit. Not with Heather. Oh no, she had me in that chair for a full hour and when it still wasn't light enough, she reapplied the bleach for ANOTHER HOUR. She bleached my hair for two hours straight. And it still wasn't totally platinum!
I know brown hair is hard to bleach to platinum, but I have spent the past several months wracking my brain to figure out why she didn't take any measures to preserve the health of my hair as much as possible? Why didn't she send me home? Or maybe suggest a deep condition before bleaching again? How was I to know 2 hours is a long time to bleach? Other hairdressers have been known to flat out refuse to continue, because the damage is not always worth the look. I trust the hairdresser to be educated enough to make such a judgement, but she made no judgement.
When she finished she gave it a cute blowout so I was happy, but after my first shower, my hair wasn't just dry. It was ELASTIC. It stretched about an inch and was impossible to run a comb through for months. Immediately after the bleaching I had a rat tail from hair that just burned right off. The rat tail is now significantly bigger - pretty much it's own short layer now because the hair is so dry it knots up and rips out no matter how much I condition it. My hair is a frizzy, dry, miserable mess and I now have to cut it off. It took 5 months just for the stretching to stop. It still falls out in chunks. I want to cry every time I look at the ends because it used to be so long and wavy and beautiful and now I look like a tortured barbie doll. I know I was asking for an edgy color job, but I just don't know how it could get this bad.
So that's my story: after 4 hours in the chair and a whopping $240 after tip, my long, beautiful wavy hair has been turned into a frizzy, stretchy, tangly nightmare and now I have to cut it all off. After months of conditioning and babying, I just can't stand it anymore. As I said before, I know bleach causes damage and I don't want to be unrealistic, but I have seen others with darker hair than even mine succeed at the color I wanted. I put my trust in Heather as the "expert" and that was clearly a mistake that I'm still paying for. read more