Any hairdressers about? Orange balayage emergency.

[arousingcheer]

Please help me before I hack off all my hair with a dull knife.

I had balayage in my dark hair with a view to eventually lightening it enough for pastel pink (bright/unnatural colours are the salon's speciality). While the process was done well, it's full-on raw bleached orange in parts, possibly where there was some old hair colour on the ends. I went back within a week to have it lightened again and it's still orange, just more of it is orange.

I understand that bleaching can be a tricky business and everyone knew there might be some old colour lurking etc. My question is what should I do next either a) to push through the orange stage and get closer to pastel hair (and how do I know if they can even get it light enough for that?) or b) to give up on pastel hair but make the current colour tolerable? Not fussed about the condition being especially brilliant (it's fairly short), as long as it doesn't all fry off iyswim.

The salon folk haven't been super helpful so I want to know specifically what to ask for next time.

As I see it these are my options:

1. Never bleach it again, apply a blue/purple-base ash tone over the current balayage, hope for the best.
2. Keep having it bleached, hope for the best.

3) Apply a darkish cool veg dye (like a blue Directions) to cover the orange until I have it bleached again. (Am I wrong in thinking those lift pretty easily when bleached? As long as I use nothing with yellow/warm tones?) 4) Dye it back to my natural dark colour, weep at the money wasted pretend none of this ever happened.

I will sheepishly admit that I got to the end of my rope and in a moment of weakness I used this and while it doesn't look worse it doesn't look better. (Those products are shit really, no pigment in them, but I was desperate and that's all I had access to.)

Any ideas or opinions? Please be gentle, I'm embarrassed at how much it's upsetting me.

No more bleach

I have a mullet now from something similar to this.

I did something similar. I put a blue veg dye over it. Went green and orange. Many many colour removal treatments later it was mouldy green and orange. In the end I gave up (cried over the £100s of pounds spent) and put a chocolate brown over it. 6 months later and many more chocolate browns later parts STILL have a green tinge 😭

I'd go with the toners for a while.

Blue directions is actually hard to shift on blonde hair because it stains. (Like blue beetroot juice if you've ever struggled to shift those stains off anything)

Stop the bleach

I never ever bleach my hair more than once-twice is exceptional to correct something.

If you just aren’t getting past the orange stage it’s probably time to give up.

Don’t touch a blue dye, thats a disaster waiting to happen. You could try a red or magenta.

Just stop here though

I would put an ashy semi over it in the same level rather than undo all the work you've put in by colouring it dark again.

If you want unnatural colours a deep red might work or a purple. Blue will go green over yellow/orange tones. Give up on the pink for now, you don't want to bleach your hair more than twice if you want it on your head and not in the drain.

YCAWS yes, that's what I was worried about, the orange vs yellow issue (so while it might help tone down the orange any yellow bits will turn green).

Frequency I think an ashy semi might be the best conservative approach. A toner is just useless on this nuclear orange. I used lots of Directions colours when I was younger and I feel like the only drastic change I never got out of my system was blonde/pastel so I might just go the ash route to grow it out and then give up on going lighter.

Your theory of blue over orange should neutralise and make it a bit ashy. HOWEVER before you reach for the dye a lot of vege dyes especially blues ones are made up of mostly green which is what it'll fade to. With your hair being quite porous at the moment after bleaching it'll stain green. Directions is the worst, the lagoon blue used to be mostly true blue but they changed the formula several years ago.

You could try a purple (directions violet) but it's not great at neutralising orange it usually does better when it's more yellow. At worst it'll do nothing.

In all honesty if you really want it you'll need to go for more bleach but I highly recommend waiting several weeks and doing several protein and conditioning treatments before you do.

DancingHouse yes, you never know what you're going to end up with when it fades. I agree, violet will probably not work. The L'Oreal stuff I used was a similar colour (though a fraction of the pigment of Directions) and it has made the lighter hair an ice cream mix of lilac and peach which would be amazing if I was 18 but just looks like a mistake on me. I wondered if a dark purple or blue might just make it manageable (dark enough to make it less conspicuously orange) until it grows out.

I might just scrub this colour out and see where I am and if I really can't deal with the orange I'll swatch an ash semi.

What's making it worse is that they insisted on giving me a blunt cut (I guess so the balayage doesn't go choppy?) and now I have clown hair (don't click on that link if you're clown phobic).

You could try putting a pink on it now not a really high staining one but a softer one like manic panic pretty flamingo and you could try diluting it down with some white conditioner - sort of like a strong toner. I would have thought the orange would make it go a peach sort of colour which you could have for now and then try to bleach again to lift the colour to get the pastel pink your after.

Right so ‘toning’ it won’t do anything- toners work on blondes and yellows, orange is too dark. Toning will have zero effect, especially not in the way that you’re hoping.

To get rid of the orange your hair needs to be lifted further. To get a pale pink colour, your hair must be lifted to a pale blonde. Obviously let a salon handle this - you can go to a different salon if you don’t trust your previous one

However to best maintain the integrity of your hair, dye it darker again. Bare in mind the dark dye may fade and your hair may become brassy as it has an orange base now.

They are your two options. Your third option could be going to a specialist salon and getting them to work with your current colour and work it into a caramel balayage. Lowlights, highlights, toning etc.

DancingHouse sadly that won't work. There is no pastel in the world that will cover this level of orange effectively. The closest I could get to making it a bit peachy was when I used a violet veg dye over it, but it has stained the lighter hair violet, which, again, I would have loved as a youngster but not now.

auramcr I see where you're going with the camouflage balayage (lol) but that is likely to be something that will last for two washes and turn orange again. I'd rather get a cooler wash on it that I can repeat myself when it fades. And I think a shorter haircut may deal with the most orange ends so I will try that first.

Interesting though that you're saying you'd carry on bleaching. With bright hair you know people are just bleaching the everloving hell out of their hair so I was a bit at the 'step away from the bleach' comments upthread. I'm waffling because I know how every time they bleach it again I will have this issue again because as light as the lighter hair is, there will always be darker hair to treat and that will go orange (and then yellow) before it is a nice colour. These yellow tones are the absolute worst with my skin colour (and age) so I may just hang up my balayage dreams for good.

Now I just have to ensure I don't make it khaki...

With the bleach, a salon wouldn't (or rather shouldn't) go straight in with in a full head of bleach if someone had dark box dye or naturally very dark hair and wanted to be pale yellow (to tone to white blonde for pastel colours).

What the salon should've done is stripped the colour from your hair using a colour reducer and then if you were too dark naturally went in with a bleach bath and a few highlights the first session, adding more highlights as you go until you are light enough to go pink, and they shouldn't be bleaching your hair more than once every four weeks at the most.

The reason they don't offer this when they should (to save your hair from unnecessary damage) is time and money. It would take hours and hours and cost hundreds of pounds. Most clients would run off and find a cheaper, quicker salon if they were told that.

If you really want the pastel at one point, my advice would be to grow out the dark, previously coloured hair and start again. Ask in your consultation how many sessions it will take to get you to blonde and what each session will entail. Run away from any salon who wants to bleach your hair more than once a month. Also, try to find somewhere that offer Olaplex.

Thanks Frequency. I had Olaplex and balayage, not a full head of bleach. The old colour was a good six inches from the scalp, just the very ends of my hair, but that could be why it's so noticeable as it's mainly the ends (esp around my face) that are orange.

What you describe is more or less what they're doing (gradually adding highlights until my hair is light enough) and it has cost me lots of time and hundreds of pounds, so it's good to know they're doing it right. I guess?

The problem is that until it's light enough for pastel (which will presumably take many months, and they said 'and some people never get there') it is violently orange. No matter how much I want lighter hair, I have to be able to live with it until then, and I just can't live with this colour.

But surely everyone else besides me isn't just living with it while it's gradually lightened over many months - ? I want to wrap my head in a schmatta and sit in the loft. I am going to have to tape oven mitts to my hands to stop myself doing something to it.

Yeah, it sounds like they're doing it right. Khaki won't be an issue as you have orange in your hair. Khaki happens when you try to colour blonde hair brown without adding the orange back in that the bleach stripped out.

If you can't live with it until your next appointment, stick a true semi over like Wella Colour Fresh. If your hair is orange, you're probably at a level 5 or 6, so go for a colour that starts with the number 4 or 5.

www.coolblades.co.uk/wella-color-fresh-ph6-5-acid.html

If you have short hair, you'll get four-ish goes from one bottle and they last around 6-8 washes and won't affect the bleaching process. Just leave it to wash out before you go back.

Frequency you're a star, many thanks. I will deffo try that.

Re reading your op it seems that you have a salon issue - they do not sound experienced in lifting dark hair, as they shouldn’t be allowing you walk out ginger after multiple bleaching sessions.

Roughly where are you based? If around Manchester try James Lear hair, he has great colour work and has before and after photos on his Instagram of high lift sessions. It is possible to get the style you want, or at the very least an ash brown/blonde instead of orange. I just don’t think your colourist is experienced enough to handle it though. Maybe give your hair a rest for a month and try a new salon

Could this help?

My home bleach job was more yellow than orange, but with bright roots (I was trying to get rid of years of red, and let my grey come through).

It went quite dark, and bluer than I wanted, but after a few weeks, it had stabilised enough to brave a silver grey. In fact, I used one from Poundland!

2 months on, it is a perfectly acceptable light Ash blonde, and the roots are much less obvious/scruffy looking than they were on dark brown/red.

Good luck, OP; it's do disappointing when you don't end up with what you expected.
(Now though, after a lifetime of lurching between major disasters and about an equal quota of successes, I always think 'it's only hair; if all else fails, it'll grow back!")

lauramcr they more or less do nothing but bleach/colour rainbow hair all day every day. It's what they're known for.

Personally I wonder if they think I don't want what I want. Since my 40s I'm forever being fobbed off with wishy-washy suburban cut/colour when I ask for anything more edgy. (It is possible that I'm being paranoid but I do feel I'm forever being talked out of anything too 'drastic' or whatever.)

Am not near Manchester (I'm SE) but I thank you for your recommendation. I wish I had a recommendation for someone down here. I'd travel if need be. I travelled 90mins to go to the salon where they made me ginger!

I wonder how experienced the hairdresser is tbh. I have/had naturally very dark brown hair and it has yellow undertones when bleached and toner didn't last very well. My hairdresser now uses high lift on it rather than bleach for highlights (I'm blending in grey) and I don't get the yellow anymore.

If you’re near slough, I highly recommend The Hair Studio in Cippenham, have a look at their Instagram. They’ve done a fab job of my (now) pastel pink hair and without having an orange stage

StillMissV many thanks for recommendation. Good to know. Is your hair naturally very dark?

I'm sure I sound like a big baby but I keep seeing women on the street with very dark hair bleached blonde and thinking why isn't my hair like that??

Not very dark, but I’ve seen tigers in the salon (I’m a regular as I get bored!) who gave gone light-dark-light-dark. My hair had various Home colours too when they did mine but they used an amazing toner which really helped. I have been so impressed at the transition process

Tigers?! Ha! OTHERS