Living Post-Ombré: SOS For Damaged, Bleached And Thinning Hair

Lauren Conrad, Khloe Kardashian, Drew Barrymore...they've all done it.

And we've followed their lead every step of the way.

The dip-dying trend, which involves bleaching the ends of your hair and often adding pigment in a different, brighter colour, wreaked havoc on split ends.

An even worse culprit, though, the ombré styles that we've seen on just about everyone from Lily Aldridge through to your mum, involved one hell of a lot of teasing, back-combing, dyeing and upkeep.

And while we might have looked uber-cool for a few months, we've now been left with a frizzy bird's nest of tangled, broken, brittle stuff that used to be hair.

Darn.

Hair SOS

Luckily for you, we've consulted the experts and tested a few of the most intense, restorative, rescue-remedies out there.

Here's what we discovered....

Tone It Down

Bleach is fun, for about five minutes.

And then it starts to look brassy and hay-coloured.

Not so fun.

If you're thinking of gradually phasing out your dips and ombrés, you could do way worse than to start with a shampoo that includes a bit of toner.

We tried out all these TIGI Bed Head products (woo) and there were two that really stood out for us.

The Dumb Blonde purple toning shampoo was pretty comprehensive. It comes out of the bottle thick and violet - the shower looks a bit like you've gone Psycho on someone with fluorescent blood by the time you're through - and it lathers up brilliantly.

After a few washes, this stuff definitely helps to take some of the harshness out of your colour.

The other one we LOVED was the Colour Goddess oil infused conditioner.

This is designed to lock in the colour that's there, whilst using oils such as almond and, currently popular, coconut oil to nourish and protect the hair.

Plus, it's not got anything to do with toning down your colour, but this one smells AMAZING.

Like some sort of gooey caramel cake. It was everything we could do to stop ourselves from squeezing the bottle into our mouths.

(Eating conditioner is not advised. Do not try this at home).

Head To The Salon

We find sometimes, if our hair is in a really dire state, a trip to the salon feels worse than going to the dentist!

Who wants to hang their head in shame as a lot of people coo over the state of our poor, damaged locks?

Not us.

However,  if you don't trust yourself to do the necessary, you need to give yourself up to the people who know exactly what they're doing.

And there are some really interesting new hair therapies out there.

I headed down to celebrity favourite Inanch salon, on Great Portland Street, London, to try out the "NanoKeratin" treatment.

This is a newer, slightly less enduring take on the Brazilian Blowout, which was so fashionable a couple of years ago.

The "nano" version follows the same principles as the "blowout", in that it constitutes binding protective proteins to your hair strands, which act as a shield against the elements.

The salon professional, in this case the lovely Ivan from Inanch, will wash your hair free of any products and chemicals and apply the NanoKeratin liquid using a colour brush.

It is then bound to your hair using hair straighteners, left on for several days to set and then - hey presto - frizz-free, stronger hair, which lasts four whole months!

The smoothing effect of the protein shield is one of the biggest selling points, because it reduces the need to brush, blowdry and style your hair regularly, giving your locks a break from heated tools.

I was super-impressed with the results.

Although my hair wasn't completely straight after the treatment, it was noticeably silky and the soft waves that resulted from leaving it to dry on its own were sleek and nice, meaning I didn't have to reach for my trusty GHDs every morning.

PHEW!

Get To The Root Of The Problem

It's not all about fixing the ends you know.

Sometimes you have to go right to the source of the problem.

We discovered several interesting products which aim to nourish your hair at the roots, strengthening the fibres and supporting growth.

This Grow Gorgeous Hair Growth Serum by Deciem reportedly uses seven different technologies to help your hair get longer and thicker.

It promises up to 13,000 more hairs on your head in a month, with daily use.

We stuck to the recommended dose, pipetting out drops all over our scalps and massaging it in.

We can't say that we noticed a dramatic change in the thickness of the hair, but it does feel like the length changed more remarkably in that time.

Plus, it smells lush and the packaging is incredibly cute, if you like that sort of thing.

Dr Hauschka's Neem Hair Oil is very, very different.

The principle is the same - apply it to your scalp before your usual shampoo and conditioner and rub it in for healthier, fuller hair.

The Neem Hair Oil is much thicker than the Grow Gorgeous serum, though, and has a very distinct, almost medicinal smell to it.

We loved it though. For some reason it just feels like it's doing good from the moment you apply it.

We've taken to putting it on at night and then washing it out and styling in the morning. This one will be in our bathroom cabinets for a long time to come!

Sunday Supplements

Actually, they're not just for Sunday, they're for every day of the week!

Being kind ot your hair doesn't just mean slathering it in products that smell like cake.

Inner Me's "Lustrous Locks" capsules are designed to be swallowed every day.

They come two-week-supply packets, but for best results, try taking them for a month.

Pump Up The Volume

So, this one is a little bit weird.

Basically, if any of you have actually had an ombré hairstyle, you'll know that in order to get that perfectly subtle, graded colour, there's usually a lot of back-combing involved in the dying process.

Back-coming is a pretty good way to RUIN your hair's health.

Those of us with brittle or already damaged hair know that back-combing will break and thin it even more.

In a big to pad out our thinning locks, we tried a couple of products that help to make it look like oyu've got more hair than you do!

The people at Kera Fiber very kindly sent us over some of their new products.

These hair building fibres consist of little organic keratin protein fibres, that you sprinkle on your hair where it is thinning, to bulk it out.

They come in a number of different colours, so we passed them around the team for testing.

The general consensus was that they didn't make that much difference to women whose hair isn't obviously patchy.

BUT - a couple of our team took them home to try on the men in their lives and we discovered that they work WONDERS for disguising a receding hairline.

One of the lifestyle lot is even considering sprinkling some on her fiance's hair on the day, to improve her wedding snaps!

Get The J-Law Chop

Dip-dying shenanigans were fun for a while, but they left the ends of our hair feeling like a dish scourer.

And nobody wants that now do they...

If the ends of your hair are in a particularly bad state, there might only be one thing for it.

Go the full Jennifer Lawrence bob and lop the ends off altogether!

As Ivan told us, much to our dismay, there really is no cure for a split end.

So, if you've got lots of them, the only cure is to lop them off altogether.

Job done.

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