5 Tips to Keep Your Blonde Looking Fresh (Without Breaking the Bank)

I have been faux blonde for a good chunk of time now. When I was younger, I really did have more fun. And now I am finding it fits in with my own perception of myself. I am a blonde now, for better or worse.

At first the quarterly salon visits were fun. Every three months (my hair grows pretty slowly) I got to go see my colourist, she would ask me what I wanted, I would drink a cappuccino, it was glorious.

But then I moved cities. I started working 9-5. I was paying a lot more rent (Toronto vs. Waterloo, let me tell you). I had real grown-up expenses and my salon visits started getting further and further apart. Which also meant that my meticulous foil highlights were looking more and more busted. It was not a good look.

It wasn’t until I met Fabio Persico, stylist at Brennen Demelo Studio, through a friend of a friend that I realized there was another way.

If you want foil highlights, you need to look somewhere else. Persico only does balayage highlights, which are hand-painted to look more natural.

There are so many reasons to love balayage I don’t even know where to start. Fabio loves it because it gives a more natural effect when the hair begins to grow out because you don’t see that harsh demarcation line. Balayage is designed to grow out. The rigidity of foils are what give you those roots after just a couple of weeks. Fabio says your stylist can customize the balayage to your needs and give you natural looking highlights.

This means that you can go way longer in between salon visits. Which means that you are spending way less time and money on upkeep and your hair still looks magical five or six months later when you go back to the salon for a few more highlights.

This also means that blonde highlights are more prone to picking up brassiness and murkiness. Fabio suggests going in for a toner halfway between a colour service really gives you longevity and only takes about 10 minutes at the sink.

In the meantime, here are a few products (with expert notes from Fabio) that will keep your blonde looking top knot-ch (see what I did there?).