True story: My mother cried the first time my sister dyed her hair. Not because it turned out badly, but because my mother couldn't believe that my sister would ruin her perfect, beautiful hair with chemicals.

Since then, I've been wary of bleaching, dying, perming, or changing my hair in any kind of permanent way. Save for a haircut every six months, my strands are fairly low maintenance. But then something happened — I started seeing girls with gorgeous denim hues or subtle, silver locks. And when I began researching looks for our story about shadow roots, well, inspiration struck.

Turns out, there's a hair color trend that's impactful, but still incredibly subtle — and perfect for commitment-phobic individuals such as myself: peekaboo hair. Basically, the technique means you only color a small section of hair along the crown of your head. That way, when your hair is straightened, you only see your natural-looking hair. But once you curl, braid, or tie up your hair, strands of color peek through for a hint of Technicolor flair. Bonus: The low touch look makes the grow out phase way less annoying.

To see for myself, I headed to Contesta Rock Hair Salon in the West Village of New York City to test it out. As far as colors, I opted for shades of blue, violet, and green for an updated take on the oil slick hair trend. And while the initial bleach stage almost scared me off, the end result was just as subtle as I had hoped.

In fact, it's been three weeks since the initial cut and color, and very few people have noticed my hair upon first glance. Yes, the color has faded just a bit — the green is less bright and the blue is slowly turning into teal — and it might not be as shocking as say, platinum blond. However, I'm pretty happy with having my little secret — call it the "business in the front, party in the back" mentality. Plus, it's so subtle, it won't make my mom cry out of shock.