My (almost) first experience with hair colouring!

When someone said "There are no free lunches in this world" boy was he wrong!! If you know me well then you would know that I love freebies. And I keep trying my hand and my luck on all the contests that I know of. Recently I got twice lucky. One was with an online contest run by Grazia India where I won a free hair styling session at Jean Claude Biguine. Which also happens to be my favourite salon in the city for a) the stylists know their job and do not funk up your hair that gets to difficult to maintain b) the stylists do not hard sell any services nor products unlike many other experiences I have had with stylists at other salons.

And the second contest that I won was conduct by BPBWeekend on Twitter which was again sponsored by Jean Claude Biguine. This one entitled me to free hair colour session. Barring one home experiment several years back I have never got my hair coloured professionally. Only reason being - I thought it's high maintenance and what if my hair ends up looking ashy or henna covered. But since Biguine is a salon of high reputation I didn't mind going ahead this time.

Aishwarya the rep from Biguine was kind enough to accomodate me and give an appointment during this hectic festive season. The only condition being I had to go to their newly opened Ghatkopar branch in R city mall as against their busy Juhu and Bandra salons that i had requested for. I accepted the condition.

So I started off my referencing. My skin has yellow undertones and I read somewhere on the net that warm colours will suit me more.Also, I wanted something subtle and natural. You know something that does not stand out much but is prominent enough for people to notice that you've done something different to your hair. So after looking for some reference pictures here is what i decided on - Dark brown (with slightly reddish tint) highlights.

Image courtesy: makeupandbeauty.com

Image courtesy: videos212.blogspot.com

The stylist assigned to me was Shayan Merchant a Sr Stylist there. I showed him the reference I had the Anushka Sharma pic and coincidentally he said he had worked with her for the same movie.So then he showed me a L'oreal shade card and we decided to streak my hair in two colours in equal numbers. We selected L'oreal Majirel 11.60 (Mahogany) and 12.50 (name I don't remember).

Pre colour; Waiting for the stylists to finish mixing colours

So after some 3 hours of  wait where there was some applying, processing and washing. I could see the final results. Shayan and his colleague gave me a fabulous blow dry too that lasted for like 3 days :)

This is how my hair looks post the colour. It is exactly like what I wanted subtle, natural, merges well with my original hair colour. Although it has not got captured in the camera well, it much more prominent in person. And what more can I say. I love it!

The mahogany plus light brown highlights

A place's service can be best judged when they are doing something without charging for it as a lot of places offer such services with lot of terms and conditions attached to them. But this wasnt the case here. Nowhere did I feel that the staff did not give me their 100%

Charges: For me it was free but normally they charge above Rs 4500 + taxes for streaking

Colours used: Loreal Majirel 11.60 and 12.50