I Turned My Dark-Brown Hair Blonde Using Only Sun-In
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I’ve had myhairprofessionally dyed exactly one time. It was 2015, and I was doing a six-week residency in San Francisco, where I knew basically no one and was cosplaying a new version of myself — the perfect opportunity to try a newhairstyle. So I booked my appointment and went from rich chocolate brown to blonde. $450 later, the dye job wasn’t blonde enough, and I was too shy to put up a fight with the woman at thesalon. So I went home, berated myself over spending so much money on something so subtle, and I considered my options: Go to another salon? Attempt DIY box-dye highlights? And then I remembered: Sun-In.
I had last used Sun-In in middle school, when I accidentally turned myhairorange. Still, I decided to roll the dice and bought it online. It showed up the next day in the exact same deep-pink bottle featuring a ’90s beach teen (who looks AI-generated, but can’t be because the design is OLD) that it did before. I sprayed, went in the sun, and my hair lightened exactly the way I’d hoped for. As myhairgrew, I sprayed my roots. It continued to grow, I kept spraying my roots. Now, my once dark-brown hair has a base layer that’s dark blonde, and the top layer of my hair has a mix of highlights and lowlights so varied that it could never be a real dye job. And yet! People I don’t know often compliment me on my hair color, and I take no greater pleasure in life than telling them it’s Sun-In.
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A bottle costs about $12 and should last you all summer. To use it, you spray it all over your head and sit in the sun. Yourhairwill turn orange at first, but don’t be deterred: You just have to keep going. (The length of the orange phase will depend on how much sun you’re getting — if you’re somewhere sunny and spend all day outside, it’ll take one or two days.) Interestingly, Sun-In is heat-activated (not sun-activated), so if you have patience — I do not — and want to speed up the process, you can blow-dry your hair for hours, and it’ll work the same way.
In the summer, I keep a travel-size version on my person at all times. I have a bottle in my car, near every door in my house, at my parents’ house, at my friends’ houses in Austin and L.A. … basically, anywhere I go, I have a stash. I justify a warm-weather vacation every winter with the savings I’m holding from not going to a salon. If you’re my friend and we’ve been anywhere in daylight, I’ve asked you to spray my head. It’s an evolving project with many contributors.
Does it damage yourhairat all the way a dye job does? Well, yes. So in peak sun season, I use apurple shampoofor blondes — mine is a Walgreens brand one that I picked up in a pinch, but I’m sure there are better ones out there — to cut down on brassiness and to keep it healthy. And the slight damage hasn’t kept me from recommending it to friends — in fact, I’ve converted many friends to Sun-In over the years. We’ll text each other hair shots after a particularly sunny day. We’ll meet up in L.A. in the winter and discuss which color bottle works best (I prefer the pink “Tropical Breeze,” which is the nonnatural, all-chemicals version). We’ll work from our stoops or yards on a rogue warm winter day. Blondes … we have more fun.
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