How Nexxus Revamped My Dry, Dull Hair With Blake Lively-Style Highlights

How Nexxus Revamped My Dry, Dull Hair With Blake Lively-Style Highlights

After years of bottle dying my hair, I needed serious help reviving my look before the damage became permanent. Here’s how my colorist at Nexxus in NYC fixed everything!

I’m now ashamed to admit it, but I had been bottle dying my hair since puberty. From highlights to low lights to ombre to burgundy, all of the various different hair colors I’ve had over the years have come straight out of a bottle sold at my local drug store. A recent trip to the Nexxus New York Salon in Tribeca helped me find out that bottle dying was not only damaging my hair, but that the unpredictable dyes now living in my strands could create major issues with whatever professional colors I was planning to have done. Not cool!

When I first went into the Nexxus New York Salon I was hoping to get the uber trendy “mulled wine” look that is all but going viral on Instagram these days. Thankfully I had my colorist, Mardiluz Toro (Instagram: @mardicolor), there to consult my hair and figure out what was actually doable — and it wasn’t mulled wine. With my dark blonde hair and the various different bottle dyed colors living on my strands, the mulled wine look would have involved stripping my hair only to re-color and highlight it. Does that sound fun to you? Because it did not sound fun to me. This is one of the reasons why only a professional colorist should be treating your hair: they know more than you do (and definitely more than Instagram does).

I was still in desperate need of a hair makeover, so I asked Mardi what she thought would be best for me. Her suggestion was to go full strawberry blonde just like A-listers Blake Lively, Evan Rachel Wood and many more have done. Needless to say, I was sold!

So, here’s what Mardi did — in her own words: “I went in and put in very fine, subtle highlights to make it look natural so when your hair grows out you don’t see that line of demarcation between your natural color and the highlight,” Mardi explained after my ‘do was done. “I teased a few ends just to give it a few pops so it’s a little brighter because I feel like they were a little dull.”

“After all of the foils came out I did a base — I call it a base break because it stays on for just a few minutes at the sink — just to soften your natural color and to blend in the few little grey’s that you have,” Mardi explained. “That sat on for about 2-3 minutes.” Once that was done, Mardi rinsed my hair and put on the strawberry blonde all-over gloss. Add a blow out and voila, my hair was like brand new — as you can see in the before and after pics shared here! The color was subtle but still so much more vibrant than it had been before. Not to mention that my hair looked so much healthier, which I loved more than anything.

Now onto how I’ve been maintaining my hair, per Mardi’s instructions and some awesome products from the Nexxus New York Salon: I’ve been doing conditioning treatments, using a color treated shampoo (Nexxus provided me with their full Keraphix line), and not washing my hair daily. Mardi informed me that using a color treated shampoo is extremely important because it preserves your color, while many drugstore shampoos will strip your color and make it fade faster. Consider this a lesson learned!