Let this be a lesson to us all about the importance of taking proper care of our hair.
Yes, that does mean listening to a professional and not hitting the bleach too hard.
Lara Sheard, 24, says she’s been left devastated by her hair turning blue and snapping off after it had faced too many rounds of bleach.
Plus she was called a Smurf by her friends, which is something we expect you’d want to avoid.
Laura had gone to her usual mobile hairdresser she’d used many times before. She asked for her usual purple roots with grey toner, but claims her roots turned bright blue.
While most of us would accept the mishap and just wear a hat until the blue faded out, Laura couldn’t bear her hair so much that she went back to the hairdresser and ‘begged’ for help.
She said her colleagues had been teasing her and her friends called her a Smurf, meaning she just couldn’t keep the blue bits in her hair.
The hairdresser gave Laura’s hair a ‘bleach bath’, which led to her hair apparently breaking off in clumps.
She ended up going to a local salon in tears, where her damaged hair had to be cut into a sharp pixie cut and dyed red. That’s quite the change from the flowing purple locks Laura was used to.
Laura, from Doncaster, said: ‘I’m very particular with my hair, it means a lot to me, so when my hairdresser said she was leaving the salon to go mobile, I decided to follow her.
‘She’d been doing my hair for years, and it’s so hard to find someone who does your hair exactly as you like it, so it was a no brainer for me.
‘She came over to my mum’s house and it was all going fine until she gasped and said “Laura, your head is turning blue!”
‘I totally panicked, but she told me to leave it as it was. My colleagues laughed and called me Smurf when I went into work the next day – I was so embarrassed.
‘I begged my hairdresser for help, so she came over two days later and put my hair in a bleach bath, but that made my hair start to break off like straw falling in clumps.
‘Now I’ve got this short red pixie cut rather than my long hair that I loved and it’s just completely destroyed my confidence.’
The bleach bath was supposed to be a gentler way to dye Laura’s hair, but the strands were simply too damaged. Soon her hair was breaking off at the slightest touch.
‘My hair was like straw,’ said Laura. ‘I was in floods of tears – I couldn’t believe my long hair was just falling away in front of me, and each chunk that broke off just broke my heart further.
‘She gave me a £30 refund as well as some treatments to use and told me to leave my hair as it was, but it just looked awful and continued to snap off after she left.’
Laura went back to her old salon on 25 July and said staff were ‘shocked’. They tried different treatments but a short cut was the only option.
Laura now plans to take her hairdresser to small claims court, claiming she was blocked on Facebook when she asked the stylist to pay money towards fixing the damage.
‘The salon dyed my hair red to try and make it look a bit better, but I was just crying constantly, I absolutely hated it,’ said Laura.
‘I had to pay for treatments and for the cut and dye at the salon, and I’ve even shelled out for an expensive wig in Sheffield which set me back another £150.
‘I’ve basically paid £300 to fix the damage so that I can go on living my life without hating my appearance, but when I asked my hairdresser for money towards it, she blocked me on Facebook.
‘I’m taking her to small claims court because she’s wrecked my hair by bleaching it twice so close together, and I’ve had to pay loads to fix the damage – she’s ruined my life.’
The hairdresser claims that Laura decided she didn’t like the colour she had done so had her hair dyed again at her request.
She said: ‘When you recolour hair after a short amount of time, it obviously will take its toll on the hair.
‘As a gesture of goodwill, I changed the colour for her because she said she didn’t like it – I didn’t charge her for that or for any conditioning treatment, and I also left her a bond reconstructer and some oil.
‘She’d been a customer quite a while so I wanted to keep her happy.
‘After a few days, she said it’s dry, it’s snapping and I said don’t do anything, keep using the products I gave you, don’t put heat on it and don’t colour it any more.
‘She said I don’t want it this colour any more, and I said well I advise you not to colour it again because it will take its toll even more.
‘She completely ignored my advice and went somewhere else and got it coloured again, and then came back to me telling me that she’s going to take me to court!
‘I’m fully insured so I spoke to my insurance about it and they said until a legal representative of hers contacts me, there shouldn’t be any discussion between us two.’
She said she paid for Laura to have a hydration treatment but Laura demanded money for hair extensions and more treatments.
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