Hair Diaries - Crafting Your Color

At-home hair dye is the original do-ityourself kit—so why does it still seem intimidating?

- Beth Shapouri

In today’s Pinterest-obsessed world, we’re led to believe that we can expertly conquer anything from backyard farming to the perfect cat eye with our own two hands and a little patience. We order Blue Apron meal-delivery boxes to make restaurant-worthy dishes, download apps to tweak photos like a professional retoucher, and buy kits to help us brew our own artisanal beer. So why do so many of us still think that at-home hair dyeing is a chemistry experiment waiting to go wrong?

I’ve been a beauty writer in New York City for more than a decade and have interviewed countless hair colorists to write scores of hair-dyeing stories, yet all through my 20s, I was too intimidated to go it alone. Like all the other women I know, whenever I wanted my color done, I headed to the salon. But once I hit 30, it quickly became clear that my very thick half-Iranian head of fast-growing, graying brunette hair would need to be touched up at least every three weeks—and that meant going to the salon would basically become my part time job. Instead, I suppressed the fear that I might burn off all my hair, or turn my roots brassy or ends inky, and set out to add hair dyeing to my list of DIY triumphs.