Colouring hair Chocolate Brown from Black?

[yazzy85]

Any advice how I can colour my very dark brown (almost black) hair to a lighter chocolate brown shade? Will Box dyes do the job or would I need to get the salon developer and colours?

I imagine you would need to strip colour from your hair before doing the lighter colour as box dyes will not lighten black hair.

You'll need to strip it. Mine had gone really dark brown, not quite black, and I ended up with lighter roots when I tried a lighter dye, so just dying over them in the darker shade again. I stripped mine with Scott Cornwall Decolour, and then a second treatment with his Colour Remover which contains a low level bleach, then re-coloured with a lighter reddish brown. I had to go and get the ends chopped off the same week as my hair was mega dry, but it looks so much better.

I think the Scott Cornwall stripper stuff is basically a bleach bath (not the colour remover one, the second one I used). I just wasn't confident about quantities in mixing up my own so figured that was a safer bet.

I've used the ColourB4 remover which worked well. There's no bleach involved just strips all the colour.

Would I need to strip it even if my natural colour is very dark brown? There's no hair dye on it at the moment. Can I colour over it right away after bleaching? Thanks x

Oh sorry, ignore me, I assumed that the dark brown was from hair dye rather than natural.

Yes, you can colour over straight after bleaching.

Go to the Hairdresser. Don't risk a DISASTER! says NM who once ended up with purple hair

I agree with Nanny go to a hairdresser.