How to get rid of brassy undertones in blonde hair

by Kate
(New York)

I have naturally dark ashy hair color, pale skin with red undertones and grey/blue eyes. Without dying, my hair looked like this:

I wanted to go 2-3 shades lighter and get medium to light ashy blonde color.

My hairdresser decided to highlight my hair to get a cold blonde color.

I liked it, but highlighting my roots every single month turned my hair into extremely white and unnatural which I did not like. He offered me to add a few lowlights to highlighted hair to tone it down and make it look more natural. I liked the result because it looked very close to my natural hair color and lighter at the same time.

Heres how it looked:







He said I should do month#1 only hightlights and month#2 highlights with lowlights together to keep it natural. But what's happened was my hair started turning yellowish and brassy. From beautiful cold ashy color they became warm yellow which does not compliment my skin tone at all. I tried purple shampoo already, but it doesn't help. My highlights become purple and lowlights stay yellow.

This is how it looks now:







It's really ugly and I don't know what to do with my current hair color. If I do lowlights again they will fade in 2-3 weeks and will become yellow again and if I do highlights only it will look too white and not natural. What I want is beautiful, natural looking, cool ashy blonde color like on the second picture. What are my options?

P.S. Purple shampoo does not help...

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According to the first image you showed of your hair, your hair already has red/golden undertones. It also seems like your hairdresser must have used a lowlight color with a yellow base, which would support the reason it's turned yellowish/brassy.

The easiest fix for your hair would be to color all of your hair a light ash blonde color (to help remove the golden colors) and then go back in and apply ash brown lowlights to add dimension to your hair. However, using an ash based color over a yellow based color could also give you green hair.

Best advice? You really should go back to your hairdresser and tell them that you're not happy with the results.

If you have hard water at your house, the tannins from the water could be adding to the brassy color in your hair too.