Help! Hair dye disaster

[IsabelArcher]

Hair is now what my mum would call barmaid brassy! I am naturally a dark mouse colour, with streaks specks of grey.

Just used a clairol nice and easy natural warm auburn and tis now the colour of my gran's hearth side collection of brass bells and horseshoes!

Any advice as to what colour I can put over it to make it more natural looking! I know I shouldn't but there's no way I am going into work like this tomorrow

If you just want t o tone it down, then Head and Shoulders Classic shampoo will help strip some of the colour out

That's an idea, sprout, thanks. Not sure if it'd be enough though, nothing about the colour is right!

Oh dear

Right, if I were you I'd do a Colour B4 - don't be tempted to dye over it, because you will get darker and darker but the red tones from the auburn (copper tones) will be forced deeper into the hair shaft and won't go, they will still show in sunlight etc

Bless your Gran.

So use something called ColourB4 which you can buy at boots. It stinks. Like rotten eggs. But washes out okay (!) though I'd recommend adding some vanilla essence to your conditioner when you are done! It will lift the colour out, and any remaining ginger tones will be from the peroxide in the dye which has lightened your natural colour. To counteract this you must use a one part dye initially - this one is best for neutralising the ginger tones and its not terribly dark so you might hopefully finds it returns you to what you were, thereabouts. Neither products will damage your hair, it might feel slightly drier for a week or two.

Then after a week, you can use any box dye you like. But do a strand test this time

Thank you Dunkey, for such a detailed solution. Boots it is. Will the first two steps allow me to not re-dye before going back I
Into the community as I assume I ought to leave at least a day before risking another colour

Head and shoulders does NOT strip hair dye! I dye my hair and use h&s on and off and it does nothing to the colour.

I wonder where this urban myth comes from?

tuganmommy Head & Shoulders makes no difference to permanent hair colour, I agree. It is 'believed' to help fade semi-permanents, such as Castings. Regular use of silicone serums, such as Frizz Ease, also pulls the colour out - apparently. This I know from L'oreal themselves, when I used a too dark colour of Castings, and this is what they advised me. Have to say it didn't work :(

It's a myth! I don't use permanent dyes, use semi, and difference between using h&s or elvive for coloured hair is zero!

I'm not trying to defend h&s reputation, just don't think people should wash their hair with it everyday in the hope of toning down a bad dye job when its going to do f all! :)

I agree about H&S, dishwashing detergent would do more in terms of stripping. You can eff around with dishwashing detergent and bleach powder and hydrogen peroxide (bleach baths etc) and there is quite a lot of info about this method of colour removal on various alternative hair forums (people with flamingo pink hair and the like) who have cuticle staining and all sorts.

But for those who have stuck to non veg dyes (no henna or Directions etc) Colour B4 is more gentle, and I would argue more gentle than just "overwashing"

OP, if you do colour B4 (read the instrucitons, follow properly) followed by the Wella colour fresh thing (which you may not get in boots, so order now to avoid dissapointment - though any light ash brown wash-in-wash-out will do the job - Claiirol do do one - but it must be "6-8 washes" and "1 part" (not mixing 2 bottles together - so no peroxide) - will get you to presentable standard, I would say, generally. Trust me, its worth doing properly - I got to the point a couple of years ago where I was trying to tone out reds and getting darker and darker and I finally got a shade I was sort of okay with and thought, I'll go to a hairdresser and get highlights, they'll break it up a bit, and they wouldn't - they said too much build up. I had to find a solution myself. It was awful, so please whatever you do don't try and layer, if you don't like those warm tones you wont like it.

That said, if you don't mind a bit of colour depth and a bit of warmth, you "could" just dye over with Clairol's "light ash brown" and see what happens. But I'd suggest doing a strand test first and looking at it in bright sunlight, because you might find it does only a bit to neutralise the warmth/brass and that you are stuck with it but darker.