Any hairdressers that can help?!

[Thatsplentyjack]

I'm in desperate need of some advice. My son had his hair bleached about a month ago but decided he wanted to go back to the dark blonde/light brown he had before. I box dyed my hair for years and never had a problem with any cour I used, so I bought a light brown dye kit yesterday but it made his hair like a dark ginger/auburn colour. He hated it so I bought a colour remover today which just made it go lighter ginger. Is there any way this can be fixed?

YABU.

Was the bleaching the first time he has ever coloured it? If not and he has coloured it before it may be because of that it's gone a strange colour.

I would be inclined to go to a hairdresser for them to colour correct before you damage his hair and it resulting in it needing cut.

If he hates it and wants it lighter you need to do a bleach bath. If he hates it and still wants it darker you need to prefill the hair with the correct undertone (which will be red or orange depending on the depth of the desired end colour) before colouring it with a salon-quality colour.

The colour remover should just take it back to the bleached state it won't go back to natural now. Whatever you do now do not put a permenant on because it will go really dark. You need a semi permanent light to mid brown. Do a test on a small piece of hair first ideally and be very careful not to leave it on too long.

The brown box dye will still lift (bleach) the hair before depositing the colour, hence the ginger coming through as the hair lifts further. The brown probably wasn't strong enough to cover the underlying colour.

Colour remover will strip back the hair to the underlying pigment. Again this reveals the red pigments leaving it ginger.

Probably best to schedule a hairdressers visit if you're not sure of the steps needed.

Oh no I’ve had heaps of home bleaching disasters over the years! It’s usually cheaper and easier to just cut it short and let it grow out tbh 🙈

I'm not a hairdresser but I'm pretty sure you need to put a red before a dark over bleach.

Colour remover makes my hair go an awful carrot orange but it’s worth it because I put a box dye (L’Oréal ash blonde) on almost immediately straight after and the new colour takes beautifully. The colour remover just ‘primes’ it. The colour never works as well if I don’t do the colour strip first.

He needs to do another colour.

I'm not a hairdresser but I'm pretty sure you need to put a red before a dark over bleach

It really depends on a lot of things but as a rule, yeah, you would normally need to go red or orange first. Hair colour is worked out in "levels" in hairdressing. If you are going darker by more than 2 levels you need to "prefill" the hair by adding back the undertone otherwise you'll end up a flat, kinda khaki colour and not the rich, glossy brown you were hoping for.

Colour correction is an art. You'll never get a salon-quality result at home. It years of training and hands-on experience to master colour correction.

Oh perfect. I'm sure my mum said she has that exact dye kit in the house so I could possibly rectify this before tomorrow. I won't finish work in time to get him to any hairdressers unfortunately.