I do this too - change my hair color, drastically. Lucky for you, yours is in good health to begin with, and you don't do this a lot. I change mine every month...heh.
The best way to change your hair color is to go to a salon and have them do it. Mind you, I always find it most fun to do my own. Best is to go in steps. You can lighten your hair to a reddish brown, and go blond from there. I went from Dark Brown, to Dark Red brown, to Lightish Red to Blonde on my own and Had fairly good results along the way (I'll try to attach pictures).
Your hair won't fall out unless you're allergic to the dye, or apply very high volume bleach right at the roots. Dying your hair WILL damage it. How much - I can't say. My hair is very fine, but I have a decent amount of it, and it doesn't damage easily, but everyone is different. Also, if you go really light blonde you're likely to lose length. I lost about 3 inches when I went blonde (but I wear extensions so I don't really notice it, lol). If you do deep conditioning treatments you'll preserve the health of your hair. Also, you should only wash it 2-3 times a week (you get used to it, trust me).
Well, because it's taking forever to upload my pictures, I'll type out how I lightened my hair at home (don't get me wrong it's still best to go to a salon);
ColorZap - advertised as a hair color corrector but will lift regardless of whether or not you have dye in your hair already. Depending on how dark your hair is already, and how well it takes to lifters, you should get a medium red to bright orange.
Red Dye - You can use a red dye like this, mixed with a
20 vol. developer to give you a really sexy fiery red.
Then if you want to go blonde after a few weeks;
Bleach mixed with your 20 vol developer will lighten your hair 3 more levels or more. You can add a packet of
UNRed to the bleach mixture to take the bronze out of your hair.
On top of that an
ash-type blonde dye will make your hair look lighter and take out more of the red. If it's STILL orange/bronzy after that, then try a
toner. It looks scary, but your hair won't be the color of the picture in the link. It just cancels out the yellow/orange tones by adding Blue/Purple tones.
In between use a deep conditioner, like Ion deep conditioning protein packets. Can't find the link, but Sallys has them.
Anyway, best of luck!
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