Any hair dye experts out there that could help me?

[WheeshtWillYe]

My natural hair colour is very dark brown hair with a very slight reddish colour in bright sunlight if YKWIM. Skin is pale with greenish brown eyes. I have been having salon colours to cover the grey & covering up the roots inbetween with Clairol Root Touch Up in dark brown. Maybe it's been colour build up but my hair was starting to look too dark & draining.

I tried embracing the grey for a while but I'm just not ready to go there yet. Last salon visit I let my colourist talk me into going lighter with some highlights with a view to hopefully making the grey roots less obvious & lightening everything a touch so I don't look quite so like Morticia Adams. I knew it was a mistake as it's a) a lot of work for someone as dark as me to go even a shade lighter & I can't afford the upkeep and b) highlights & covered grey go really gingery on me quickly. I currently have dark & grey roots with nice pinky ginger streaks . I recently tried a root touch up in medium brown but it didn't really take to my hair & my grey streak at the front also looks pinky.

I was thinking of putting on a permanent colour (Clairol Foam?) in a medium brown in the hope that it will cover the grey & the highlights but not be as dark as the reast of my hair & hopefully look like I have some different (natural!) tones to my hair rather than an all one colour dark drown. However I got a bit confused in the store - there is medium brown, medium golden brown & medium ash brown. What is the difference & how do I know which is best for my colouring? Will medium brown cover the grey or do I need to go back to dark brown to solve the dark root problem & pinky grey? Will dark brown cover grey, highlights & rest of hair the same or will I get some difference in tone?

Sorry for the essay, but tired of messing my hair up & faffing around not knowing what I'm doing. Wish there was a magic pill you could take to keep grey hair away. Hope somebody can advise. Thanks so much.

Hmmm I'm not sure what that is she uses at the end but whatever it is I don't use it...I do sometimes put a bit of MOP "Glisten" in there or even the tiniest bit of MorrocanOil on my hands and just smooth it through. Sometimes I use nothing and I don't tend to use hairspray either - it doesn't need it to hold the curl and it just tends to make it crunchy and go a bit messy when I sleep on it.

Tattydevine I need your advice again.I did the colour b4 yesterday(more grey than I thought) and immediately put on an 8 wash light golden brown.my hair is now light brown /orange.I can livE with it for a few days.A couple of things- when is it safe to put a permanent colour on?do you think I should try a semi permanent first?
Ive bought a light golden brown to put on but now not sure if that will encourage the orange to stay.Do you think that colour will be ok to use?
Thanks again

Tattydevine-where are you?

Sorry here I am!

I would change the Light Golden Brown to Light Ash Brown. The pictures on my profile show you just how much it kills orange/gold/red tones. Hell my hair was practically pink!

Try and live with it for a few days. I did mine after 5 days. You are supposed to wait 7 days and 3 washes. I made sure I'd done the 3 washes, and I also did a strand test.

You could wash it 3 times, do a strand test (snip off a small section of hair and apply some of your chosen colour to it, rinse after the instructional time and see if it has reoxidised - if it hasn't, you are pretty safe)

Can you wait until the end of the weekend?

Thanks tatty.I'm fine to wait until after the weekend.I'll go and get the ash.do you think I should get the permanent or semi?

Tatty you really know your stuff- THANKS!!

I have followed your advice from a previous thread to try and get some darker colours into my (frankly) over processed hair. Previously I either used a brown and it ended up too reddy or ash blonde which ended up khaki.
so, following your advice I used the nice n easy 103B champagne blonde on the white blonde then the 114 threaded through in sections. Its a lovely brown not too different to my natural colour, I REALLY hope it doesn't fade reddy but I am really pleased and intend to do a bit more, I'm working my way up through my hair

THANKS AGAIN

Yay Stuffedcat!

Livvy - to for it, go the permo.

Its never really permenant, on pourus hair. Start light (go light rather than medium) which you were going to anyway. Don't be tempted to leave it on too long. If it seems dark, wash a few times in the first few days.

It'll be great!

Tatty, thanks again! I finally got around to doing my colour & it's turned out great. I did strand tests on the medium golden brown, the light ash brown & also Belle Colour medium brown. So glad I did as they all looked pretty dark over my dark brown. Went with the light ash & I'm really happy with the results - gingery pink look is gone but I still have some variation in colour through the old highlights & grey bits. I would never have tried a light brown if you hadn't suggested it but it looks so much better than the dark colours that I thought matched my natural colour.

My hair feels a bit tuggy though, I usually just use a very light conditioner, so I'm guessing i just need something a bit richer.

Thanks so much for all the advice!

Yeah, just some good moisturising conditioners for a little while. Doesn't have to be anything expensive, good old 3 minute miracle or something. If you have a day where you are bogging around at home and maybe washing your hair later, wet your hair and comb some conditioner through and leave it in for a couple of hours. You can even get some sweet almond oil or wheatgerm oil or apricot kernel oil (any oil really but those ones smell nicer) and slather it on and comb it through and wrap in clingfilm for a while before washing it - its just some intense moisturisation. The glossing ones that come with the Clairol dyes are great for after washing. But it will recover. If you think you have structural damage, you could have a salon treatment, but you just sound a little dry. Moroccan Oil is lovely if you want to treat yourself and the GHD Remedy cream is excellent if you have actual damage and excellent for preventing any further damage specially if you are going to be heat stying as well.

Glad you like your results!

Hi Tatty, wonder if you can help me as you seem to know what you're talking about (and I don't have a clue!). I've been home dying for a while now and have been trying to get to a light golden brown colour but I stupidly used a John Frieda foam colour a while ago which turned my hair very dark reddish brown and haven't been able to get rid of the reddish tones since. Last time I dyed it I used a Nice and Easy dark blonde colour - no gold tones - which has helped calm the red down but it's still orangey under bright lights.

I was wondering, if I use a light ash brown/dark ash blonde to get rid of the warmth and then use a light golden brown/dark golden blonde am I likely to go orangey again or will I go golden? I can't seem to work out how to get rid of the red and introduce gold! Any suggestions much appreciated...

Right CherryDrops

Red tones are hard to get rid of, (unless you want to keep them, in which case they seem to wash out in the shower, bleed onto your pillowcase, and fade to pink in days!) - they always seem to peek through under lights.

You need to be a bit careful about layering on yet more colour or you will just go muddy and you will still have red tones in sunlight! They are there, they aren't really going anywhere.

You have 2 options. You strip the colour out, using ColourB4 Extra Strength, cover the hair that will be revealed which is likely to be gingery with a Nice n Easy Medium Brown or Light Brown 8 wash as you cant use semi or permenant on it (containing peroxide) for 1 week due to reoxidiation, and it will look a bit shit for a week but not too bad, then do a permenant colour in your chosen colour (with ash, because the revealed hair will be a bit gingery). This is the best option as you will be getting rid of "build up" and starting pretty much from scratch, and toning your hair rather than doing a complete colour change.

The 2nd option is that you go to a salon and get a full head of highlights (or maybe a half head will do) and then cover over the lot with something neutralish (dont use anything too ashy over highlights though you might get away with a dark ash blonde) so neutrally colour, maybe Loreal Recital Preferance Rimini (though to be honest, if you have the money to get highlights, get your hairdresser to tone them with an ash to kill out the gold a bit)

Personally I would do the ColourB4, in fact I have done it, I got rid of MEGA red tones (see the pictures on my profile) - left me with a pinky ginger, coloured over that with Nice n Easy 114 Light Ash Brown, a few weeks later I had a full head of bleach highlights which left me with a Jennifer Annistony look (I think some of the ash brown had washed out in the meantime, revealing a toned down version of the ginger, if that makes sense)

After that I did my roots with Loreal Rimini which brought my light to medium brown (with gold cast) natural hair up to a very light golden brown (but you might be different, we would need to reassess your new "root" colour if you did this)...

Just to add, I am very impressed with the Nice N Easy "golden" browns - I use the medium - but the light might be good for you as a base colour once you've got the body of your hair sorted - they are gold as opposed to red. They are a warm brown without being a mahogany.

Thanks for the advice, I have some ColourB4 left over from the John Frieda disaster so might give that a try. I'm very wary about doing anything that will make it look worse as I have managed to get rid of most of the red so glad to have some good advice before I go back down the wrong path again!

Hope it works out for you. Its funny that I pretty much had the same thing, in that I went from very dark browns and reds to pinkyginger to ash brown to golden blondey brown so I certainly know how to get you up to light golden brown if you can lose some red. That said, if you are using highlights, you can have a fair bit of reddish cast left in your base colour and "get away with it" because the light bleach tones definitely neutralise it.

But you really want a block colour that does it and to really nail it stripping it can be a good idea. Actually "stripping" is a misleading term really because its not so much stripping it than reversing it - that's what the hydrosulphate does, allowing you to shrink the molecules and rinse it, whereas bleach does strip.

I do think the ColourB4, whilst a bit drying, is kinder than bleach in the long run. Drying, but not totally "restructuring" your hair in the way bleach does. Too much bleach and you are cotton wool and there's no going back...

Dry hair, meh, nothing a bit of oily treatments can't fix.

I am working on a campaign called 'No Test-Tint' - A national campaign making people aware the serious effects of hair dye. I am gathering research on whether people perform a patch test before they apply the dye. I would be grateful if you could participate - follow the link to my survey. It 3 short questions (click answers). www.surveymonkey.com/s/7YCF6P3. It is purely for research so you dont need to provide your name etc..

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I am working on a campaign called 'No Test-Tint' - A national campaign making people aware the serious effects of hair dye. I am gathering research on whether people perform a patch test before they apply the dye. I would be grateful if you could participate - follow the link to my survey. It 3 short questions (click answers). www.surveymonkey.com/s/7YCF6P3. It is purely for research so you dont need to provide your name etc..

Visit our Facebook Page - www.facebook.com/pages/Almond-Solicitors-Limited/391187340941517
-or-
Visit our website - www.almondsolicitors.co.uk