Long hair and highlighting

Hi Everyone,

Long time member here, but have never really posted much and I haven't been on for a very long time.  Anyhow, after years of having shoulder length hair and thinking I'd never be able to grow my hair long, I finally have been able to! It must be all those prenatal vitamins I continued to take after I had my twins.  And of course I LOVE the length.  It's currently getting close to bra strap length and I would love to get it even longer.  The problem is, I have gotten myself into a dangerous cycle of highlighting every three months and then having to have regular trims which will obviously keep me from achieving any progress with growth.

Knowing this, I've been entertaining the idea of quitting the highlights.  The last time I went, which was last week, we decided to throw in some lowlights so I wouldn't get too blonde and guess what?  The ends of my hair absorbed that dark color like a sponge and now it just doesn't look too nice. It was a real wake up call, frankly...though my hair doesn't look damaged, it obviously must be to have taken such an awful color on the ends.  My stylist always insists on bleaching and toning.  We never discussed using a high lift color...if it's gentler on the hair, I would be all for it. I guess my question is, is it even possible to go lighter and keep long hair healthy? Has anyone here been able to do that? If I have to choose, I'm choosing to keep the length.  I know growing the color out will be awful though.    I guess I should be thankful that the ombre is in right now.

Would love to hear opinions/advice.  Thanks!

I think it might depend on your hair. I have seen some pictures of lovely dyed blondes with very long past the waist hair, and it seems to work out fine for them, but I'm unable to get mine much past bra length when I dye it lighter, I just can't stand splits and I keep needing to cut them off. You are already about bra strap length, so if its fine now, its probably okay as long as you don't let them keep making it lighter and lighter until you wind up really blonde. It of course, also depends on how long you want it to get. Extreme lengths do require more careful behavior because the ends are on your head years longer than the shorter parts.

Unfortunately, there's not really a good way to dye hair lighter and it not get damaged. Your lowlights will be better (if that means going a little darker), because darker dyes tend to use only 10 volume peroxide (which is 3% hydrogen peroxide). This is still damaging, but less then any lightening. I'm not sure if bleach or high lift would be more damaging. I used only high lift on my blonde in the past and it was very damaging, I got lots of splits and my hair was very porous. High lift also tends to only go light enough if your natural hair is a fairly light color.

Hope that helps!