Growing out bleached hair

[peckforton]

I have been bleaching my hair for years and recently went platinum so I could have lilac hair. I have now decided due to the condition of my hair I want to go back to my roots and grow it all out. I want to dye it as near to my natural colour which is mousy brown with a few grey streaks, so it doesn't look so bad. Most of the info on the web is for american products or quite old so don't know if they are available.

You are going to have a problem getting a cool cast to the hair but you can turn it a neutral brown yourself.

You firstly need to put the red back in. If you don't you will have khaki hair. Use a semi permanent around level 6.5 or 5.5. It basically needs to be a .4 or above. Something like 5.3 doesn't have enough red and won't sort it.Leave it a couple of days and then go over it will a natural brown permanent shade.

Thanks for that, any advice on brands? or just go for the well known ones?
I may have to do it in one day as I can't have bright red hair for the day.

Try Country Colors Highland chestnut or Loreal casting Amber for the red toned semi colour.

Go over with Loreal excellence light or medium brown. Light is probably best as you can always go over it with a darker one if it's not dark enough but it's harder when the situation is reversed.

Thanks again, is it better to have the brown as a permanent or semi-permanent?

Permanent- I find it locks the colour in better. It will fade quicker once the hair underneath is bleached because hair becomes more porous once processed to that extent.

Whatever you do though do not put a dark brown on. The times I have this it has turned jet black and it will not shift. No idea why but it's not a good look!

Thank I you will let you know how I go on this week.

Well I went for it and dyed my hair today with the recommended products and it has turned out a lovely chocolate brown, thank goodness I chose the light brown.

It will probably fade quite quickly, best to top up with semi permanent colour.

Yay! Glad you are happy

I did the exact same in bleaching white and then lilac last year. Then I put a perm brown over the top and looked surprisingly nice.

I then topped up with Adore semi perm in Mocha I think, they are amazing semis, and do no damage at all.

I am finding though even a year and a half later my hair is in poor condition. A couple of weeks a after a trim the ends go frizzy and will probably remain until it all grows out.

I would very strongly recommend getting it sorted out at a hairdresser - at least for the first time.

You might also want to consider cutting off quite a lot of your hair if it's long. It will get rid of the friend ends, and get rid of some of the damage. Even if it isn't long, I'd still recommend cutting off as much as you can bear to part with. If you think about it, it takes about two years to go from pixie cut to shoulder grazing length. So depending on the length, it will take a number of years to grow out the damaged hair.

It's definitely worth it though. I did the same thing early last year (though I wasn't going from peroxide blonde, just from endless years of highlights).

Definitely worth dyeing the hair back to your natural colour whilst you're growing it out, but bear in mind that the colour will fade on the bleached hair.

As long as you keep chopping it off on a regular basis, you'll get there eventually.