Hair Stalking: Ammiel Wows Us With Her Under-The-Sea Dye Job

At R29, we're always searching high and low to bring you the best runway, red-carpet, and influencer looks to keep you inspired and motivated to try new things. But, sometimes we don't have to look all that far to get there — check out the amazing teal dip-dyed strands our very own junior designer, Ammiel Mendoza, walked into the office with this week. When we found out she had created the entire look herself over the span of a weekend, we simply had to get the lowdown on exactly how she did it (hint: it involved a lot of patience, and even more conditioner!).

Ammiel decided to go for the, um, green, after a trip to Washington, D.C. was canceled at the last minute. "I definitely have thought of dying my hair numerous times," says Ammiel. "I have such long hair and it gets boring. I needed a change!" Deciding to dye only the ends was less about making a statement and more about insurance against hair-color disaster: "I only did the ends because I figured if it didn't turn out the way I wanted, I could always chop it off." Wiser words were never spoken.

To get the look, Ammiel had to bleach her ends twice to remove her natural dark pigment. She then applied a toner to tone down the warm hues in the bleached hair. To get the mermaid-y color, Ammiel applied good ol' Manic Panic in After Midnight, which turned slightly teal when mixed with the natural warm tones in her hair, but Ammiel says she doesn't mind. According to her: "I originally wanted it to be a dark blue, but I like the way it turned out!"

Because Ammiel was concerned for the health of her hair, she spaced each coloring out over three days and slept with a conditioning treatment in her hair each night ("I'm not sure if you're supposed to do that, but i didn't want my hair breaking off!").

Impressive, huh? For her instruction, Ammiel credits YouTube, Google and "her friend who was on FaceTime for the whole time" for giving her the info she needed to execute all of the steps successfully. Not just anyone can pull off turquoise hair, but we think this shade in particular is perfect on Ammiel.