Hate my new hair colour :-(

[Raptorrethy]

I am usually blonde but, stupidly, foolishly, idiotically decided to try a shade more natural and I feel mousy and frumpy It is now a very dark blonde or very light brown.

Is there anything I can do, or use, to lighten it a bit short of going back and spending another fortune getting it put back to normal??

i'm a blondie too and dye at home with a dark ash blonde shade. they do fade quite quickly and mine is usually a fair bit lighter after at the most a couple of weeks. try repeated washing with head and shoulders to lift it a bit.

did the hairdresser use a toner to make it darker? if so they usually fade

use a anti dandruff shampoo
it's harsh on hair colour therefore it's lifts the colour quickly

you could try the colour b4 (?) style hair dye strippers, I used it to get decades of black dye out...so it should work on one application of dark blonde?

Sorry to hijack

Lazysuzanne can you tell me a bit more about getting decades of black dye out?! I have some dark patches in my hair which are too dark and have been there for years. I am slowly coming to the realisation that really dark hair will not suit me for much longer. I can't even remember what my natural hair colour is - mid brown of some sort. I have no idea how to go back to a natural mid brown without spending £££££ and being told off by hairdressers...

sure Faddy :)
I have medium ash brown hair, with some grey, I'd dyed it black or dark brown for several years.
I decided to revert to natural colour and used colourB4 once, it came out a reddish colour, I dyed it with medium ash blonde, it came out sort of dark strawberry blonde.
I liked the colour, I thought it looked fine, but I'd decided I wanted to go a lighter blonde and wound up having it bleached to platinum blonde at the hairdresser.

I probably could have just used a darker ash blond after the colour stripping and gone back to my natural colour, but it may have taken a few goes to get the red out and a hair dresser would be able to get it right (much) more quickly.
They wont tell you off, they want your business

And condition wise my hair is good.

Faddy Colour strippers and colour removers are different things. Strippers contain bleach and can be damaging to the hair. Removers only shatter the molecules of the dye which then get rinsed out. Removers can be used up to 3 times in quick succession to lift out dye. Just be sure to condition your hair well after use.

It'll probably lighten up after a few washes, give it a week and see how you feel. If you still think it's a bit too dark, I'd go back to the hairdresser and explain and see about getting a few highlights in there to break it up a bit. This has happened to me before and they've either sorted it for me for free or at a reduced price. You don't necessarily need to strip it or go for a full-on recolour if you only went one shade darker than what you normally go for.

i dyed my hair black for years,and red,purple etc too,i tried at points to do it at home but if you want it to look decent then you really need to get to a good hairdressers,i have had a full head of highlights (they put on a toner too)every 6 weeks,4 times now,and my hair is now a honey blonde,when its light enough i will probably have some different tones of blonder through it instead of just blonde.

OK thank you samesize and lazy. My hair has a few greys too lazy and I am simply NOT ready yet to leave them as is.

So (any hairdressers please feel free to jump in and advise!): say I use Colour B4 and mine comes out the same kind of reddish colour. What would be the best way for me to proceed? I'd be wary of putting another home colour in but equally wary of just getting a colour done at the hairdresser's - they're nearly always too dark even when I tell hairdressers how quickly my hair grabs colour!

Can you get 'highlights' for brown hair? Or, I am wondering if it would be possible to go down the ombre road...something like this? I like how subtle it is.

Thank you all good advice here.
My original (but not natural) colour is much lighter so could this darker colour still fade? She used highlights in foils...no toner. I thought foils were permanent
Hopefully I will soon stop being startled when I catch sight of myself in the mirror...

It depends on your hair type. IIRC, the more porous your hair is the more it "grabs" colour, which washes out and tones down after a few washes. My hair is very like this- when it's just done it looks like a chestnutty brown, but gradually lightens up to a mid-blonde after a few washes.

But if this isn't something you've noticed with your hair before it may just be that the colour is too dark, in which case...highlights!

OK I have no idea really...so I shall have to wait and see. I don't think my usual highlights wash out, I just start to notice darker roots.
Methinks a new, bright lipstick is necessary to stop me fading into mousy oblivion...

I did this last week. Hated it at first but 9 days on I'm warming to it. I would have said give it chance. I couldn't keep up the commitment any longer and, it was making me look washed out.

I did ask the hair colourist to "highlight" around my face but she didn't so, may go back and ask for her to do that but have to say, it looks very shiny in a way my blonde didn't.

I concur that it can take a while to get used to a change of hair colour, I tend to have a kind of knee jerk response where I really want to dye it straight back to the old colour.

If I can resist that I often end up liking the new colour.

Vitamin C effervescent tablets crushed up & mixed with a clarifying shampoo, leaving it on for around an hour, acts like a colour remover - I've done this twice over the last couple of weeks, I was amazed at how well it worked! However, I was lifting a dark brown colour to return to a more auburn shade. I can't say how it will work on lighter hair colours, I assume the same - google it & there are how to vids on you tube. It's pretty ace & cheap!