Pastel colors are in — forget Kool-Aid, do it right!

It’s suddenly all the rage these days — pastel colored hair.

There are tutorials online and Pinterest is blowing up about it. Celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicole Richie are giving it a try. Even national talk show host Kelly Ripa recently sported striking teal locks for an entire week on “Live With Kelley and Michael.”

No longer can we be just blonde, brunette, red or black. Now we can have purple, pink, green and blue. If you can think it we can probably create it.

But there is a price.

First off watching a 10-minute tutorial online probably isn’t going to tell you what’s really good for your hair. In fact, often the tutorials present truly bad ideas. For instance, using food products in your hair to achieve the pastel look.

Some of the most common foods are Kool-Aid, baking soda and vinegar. Many online tutorials use these foods to create cool looks. But the videos are at best a half-truth. What they don’t show is the damage these products do to hair afterwards or how much money it costs for stylists to fix the mess. These foods burn your hair – so the option are either cutting off the damaged hair or undergoing a lengthily and costly color correction. It’s time and money you don’t need to spend.

If your heart is set on pastel coloring here’s how to do it – without food products.

First you should bleach your hair to white. Depending on your natural hair color and health of your hair that can take anywhere between 40 minutes to 4.5 hours. Once your hair is lifted to a bright white blonde then you can put the pastel coloring on it.

Make sure to use semi-permanent pastel coloring dyes. Semi-permanent pastels just stain the hair; they do not penetrate into the medulla and change the hair color. That’s a good thing.

You’ll notice the pastel begin to fade and wash out every time you shower. Cold water, color shampoo and conditioner will help slow the fading, but the point is that reapplication is necessary to maintain the pastel look.

To keep up this new look you’ll need to commit to reapplying the pastel color about every 3 to 4 weeks. You’ll need to repeat the blonding every 6 weeks, because without maintenance this look will fade and look dingy fast.

Now a word of caution – this process can still be very damaging to your hair. And it is costly and time consuming, but if it’s maintained and done right your hair will be beautiful.

So if you really want to rock this latest trend, forget the online tutorials and the Kool-Aid. Get yourself a stylist that can help you can keep the integrity of your hair, or at least consult a stylist before you try to do this yourself.