Some of you (FellatioNelson, Alouisereg etc) might remember me banging on about red hair etc during recent threads. Basically since November last year I started going redder and redder in the hair, first at the hairdresser and then at home (it seemed like a good idea at the time)...
I got sort of tired of it sometime in February and decided to colour over but of course the red was shining through...I went to the hairdresser to have highlights and she said I had so much colour build up and layers of colour all she could do was some nice red slices (which I did like to be fair and let her do)
Anyway, I did worry about how I was going to one day not be red anymore! Its a bloody hard shade to cover over without it peeking through and the thought of growing it all out didn't really appeal.
In the end I decided to use ColourB4, available at Boots and Superdrug. I think its a relatively newish product, not everyone has heard about it. Stripping out colour in a salon generally involves bleach or bleach baths - very bad for the hair, it alters the structure of the hair, though generally it survives. But this product is different in that it is a hydrasulphate, and shrinks the artificial colour molecules of permenant and semi-permenant dyes.
I was slightly worried it would dry out my hair but my alternative for lightening up significantly would involve so much bleach that I felt I had nothing to lose and it had good reviews online.
So I bought 2 boxes of ColourB4 Extra Stregnth. (About £12 from Superdrug). I bought 2 boxes because I have long hair, didn't know if it would cover my whole hair (it did, easily) and/or whether I would need to use a 2nd box due to excessive colour (I did, and you can use them one after the other, up to 3 in a row if you need to)
So I did that last Thursday. Took ages, lots of rinsing (you basically apply the product to dry hair - it stinks a bit, like hangover farts, but not strong, just feint) - wait an hour, rinse rinse rinse (for about 13 minute in all) then dry and review the results.
After the first it had killed my dark brown colour build up and a lot of the red, but was still a dark ginger with a pink hue on the bits that had been bleached so I went for the 2nd box.
After rinsing all that out it was a quite strawberry blonde but with stong ginger tones. Most the pink hue had gone.
You can't colour with a semi permenant or permenant colours within 7 days, they say, in case any remaining molecules re-oxidise. So I threw a Nice n Easy Temporary colour (6-8 wash) Medium Brown over the ginger to tone and cover it. (Needed 2 boxes of this, they are not huge). This left me with a quite pleasant light warm brown which I could live with in the meantime.
I got ansty yesterday (after 4 days) so did a strand test with Nice n Easy Light Ash Brown. This is quite a boring colour but it kills ginger dead - it has an almost greeny undertone to it (sort of, anyway). I applied this to a gingery strand. It didn't reoxidise and it killed the ginger - it far exceeded my expectations!
So this morning I washed the remaining 6-8 wash out of my hair and coloured it with the Nice and Easy Ash Brown.
The verdict - my hair is now a very light natural brown colour - no major gold undertone, so it killed the ginger, its not red, but its not dark either - its the lightest my base colour has been in years.
The idea is that I will soon have some highlights put in and be a subtle blonde for the spring or summer. I never would have achieved this without stripping all the dark chocolate and red tones from my hair.
My hair is soft, shiny and bouncy, does not feel dry, and I am really happy with it as a base colour for my blonde.
I would highly recommend this product to anyone. If you have colour build up (even blacks and dark browns) and have been wanting to go lighter for ages but hairdressers have fobbed you off due to the difficulty of doing it without turning you ginger, or if you have done the red thing and are now over it, this is the product for you.
Hope this review has been useful for some.