Removing hair dye

[TheyreMadITellYouMaaaad]

Dd dyed her hair black during the Easter holidays. She did a good job, and it looked stunning, but her roots are showing and she wants to revert to her natural colour rather than continue to dye.

She chose a dye that was described as lasting for a number of washes (27, or something like that), expecting to be back to natural by now, or, at the worst, a darker version of her own colour. But it has barely faded - just gone from blue-black to a more natural-looking black.

Is there anything she can do to get rid of the dye?

You can get colour strippers from the same section as perming solution at Boots but I'd take her to a hairdresser to be honest. A friend of mine is a hairdresser and gets a fair bit of work from fixing this kind of thing.

Do you mean for a haircut?

I've used one of those colour strippers and ended up going the the hairdressers anyway. I'd just skip the stripper and head straight for your local salon as PP suggested (for colour correction).

I think this is going to be a very expensive learning experience, if returning to her normal hair colour means a salon dye-job!

I also think she's going to have to suck it up. I happily pay for her haircuts, but am not happy to shell out £££ to correct a home-dye. So I think dd will have to choose between roots, more home-dye, or a haircut. Or paying for it herself.

Home stripper should work ok if this is the only time she's dyed it. Follow the instructions very carefully, especially the rinsing part.

I use the ColourB4 strippier all the time. Depending which dye you've used it's fairly easy to remove, you shouldn't have a problem removing the semi permanent dyes.

You may find after using colour b4 that her hair is lighter and a bit brassy as even semis contain peroxide which lighten the hair even dark ones

I think the lightening and brassiness is less with semis as there is a smaller % of peroxide, and if the semi has only been used once the lightening should be very minimal. If there is significant lightening you can use either a level 1 / 6-wash (single tube) colour immediately in a dark ash blonde colour or cool light brown. If there is brassiness I'd suggest using a purple shampoo, like Touch of Silver. You must avoid anything with peroxide in after a stripping product for at least a week or else any left over old pigment can re-oxidise and re-appear!