2016 – Dry and damaged hair. This is how my hair looked for years; I didn’t pay too much attention to it and continued flat ironing my hair every day to get rid of the frizz, leading to more damage.

Grew out color and most of the damage.

Cut out some heaviness and brightened with a color melt. Done at Style Theory in Calgary.

2018 – Grow out from the previous cut; the healthiest my hair has looked in years.

Caramel highlights; I don’t like how this turned out. Done at Style Theory in Calgary.

Going blonde; session 1. Done at Style Theory.

Ashy blonde; session 2.

Every root touch-up and tone, the shade of the hair was slightly different; I could never get it back to that ashy shade.

I left purple shampoo on my hair too long; there are about 4 different colors in my hair at this point.

Old color showing through on the bottom; ashy on the top and yellow on the bottom.

Attempt to blend the top half to match the bottom. My hair has started to look quite thin, damaged and dry at this point, despite my best efforts to keep it looking healthy.

Air dried; looks dry and damaged. Comparing the health and look of my hair to the before and after blonde photos, it looks drier more frizzy and thinner, not to mention the stiff, dry feeling after getting it wet in the shower still after 5 months. The light hair against my scalp made it look thinner as well.

Have had thinning hair for a few years now.

Ombre balayage with chocolate brown roots. This is my favorite technique so far, but could be blended better. I decided to get this color and let my hair grow out (I’ll still need to get grey coverage). It looks much better and is lower maintenance without the damaging lightening sessions. Also, the darker roots fading into the lighter color makes finer hair look a bit thicker.

Cut in bangs to disguise the thinning hair.

New color line at the salon (Max Eli); more brown than I wanted and has a green tinge. Done at Style Theory by a Max Eli color educator.

The above brown hair faded quite quickly. I decided to leave my hair alone, just let it grow and try to heal it. It is dry, thin, breaking and looks quite bad. After numerous treatments, oils and conditioners, there was nothing I could do except cut the damage off.

I went to a different salon to get a cut and color (Industry Hair Salon); I wanted a chocolate brown, but the hairdresser said he was going to go a bit darker as it would look better. This color is darker than my natural color. The cut is just okay; the color is too dark. I will not be going back to this salon.

Back to my regular hairdresser (Style Theory) to get a keratin straightening treatment. This process lightened my hair. I will post a review once the treatment fades.

It took 7 months for the keratin treatment to fade from my hair.

2021 – Most recent photo after growing out my hair for a couple years.

October 2021 (photo by styletheory.ca) – My first hair cut in about 2 years (shown above air dried) was done at Edges Salon in Calgary by a level 4 stylist. The hair felt heavy on the bottom and did not have much shape. The cut dried in an uneven frizzy triangle around my head. I went to Style Theory to get it fixed 2 weeks later.

September 2022 – Not much new with my hair. I had grown it for about a year and have continued to use the K18 hair mask. At my last haircut a couple weeks ago, my hairdresser said my hair felt really healthy, I expect because of K18.