Thanks to a recent Instagram trend, sea salt spray is no longer the only way to get beach-inspired hair. People enhance their tousled waves by dying their hair ocean blue. This blue hair dye craze seems to be taking over our social media feeds – since June this year, #oceanhair has been tagged over 12,000 times on Instagram. So if you want to add a tropical vibe to your style, ocean hair might be the new look for you.

Ocean hair isn't just one shade of blue; this new trend is more complex than you might think. Stylists use a combination of cobalt, turquoise, teal and subtle hints of green to create vibrancy and depth to the style. This mix of colors gives the illusion of ocean-like movement in your hair, so you can have waves in your style and color at the same time! We have California-based hairstylist Brittany Holland to thank for this ocean hair trend. She posts her original hair color creations on her Instagram, and many of her clients have requested blue hair color for their own ocean-inspired look. Located in Bakersfield, Holland often longs for the beach, so she looked for a hairstyle that would make her feel closer to the ocean. The entire ocean hair process takes about four hours. To create the perfect base for the blue dyes, she must first bleach a client's hair, so be prepared to wait patiently for your ocean hair!

This hair trend seems simple at first glance, but just like the ocean, there is a lot of depth involved in this process. Most people don't realize that vibrant dyes such as blue and red shades do not penetrate all the way into the hair shaft, but rather remain on top of the hair. This means that the color fades much faster than natural permanent or semi-permanent dyes. To maintain ocean hair, colorists recommend using a shampoo that is color-safe and sulfate-free, and washing the hair as infrequently as possible. So don't blame your hairdresser if your dye fades quickly, because fashion colors don't develop and process in the same way as natural colors. Maintaining a vibrant color like ocean blue takes investment and time.

Has the allure of the ocean inspired you? Before you make the decision to be the girl with blue hair, there are some important things to consider.