Home hair dye help!

[Riddlediddle]

My hair is a mousy light brown colour with an increasing number of grey hairs so I've always had a half head of blonde highlights put through it to slightly lift it. I currently have about 5cm root growth at the top and I honestly can't afford to keep having highlights done. The rest of my hair (shoulder length) still obviously has the highlights in. My question is can i just put a dark blonde box dye over my whole head now to save the cost of going to the hairdressers for highlights? I'm really clueless about this so would really appreciate any help! Thanks

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Yes, I did this , mousy brown, then more and more grey, it got expensive. I still dye my hair with a box colour.

I use an ash blonde 9 and people think it is natural! I then touch up my hairline with the same box colour just using a teaspoon each of colour and developer.

The greys make it look a bit highlighted too.

I coloured over my highlights and it worked well. Much easier and cheaper.

I've read horror stories about green hair when highlights are covered over so I'm nervous. What brand box dyes are best?

I used L'Oréal Excellence but I did light brown. It worked perfectly.

I dyed over highlights (but went back to my natural brown). As far as I remember, you need something warm toned to go on the bleached hair first to prevent the green, so I used a honey blonde semi dye first, then a neutral brown about a week later. This may also work ok if you're using a dark blonde, but if your natural colour is dark and you're going a few shades lighter, it will be hard to do at home.

So this didn't go well tonight. My hair has turned f**king orange

Yep that happened to me too.
Fucking disaster.

Purple toner is what you need to get!
And any more colour you put on needs to be ash, with zero warmth in it.
Good luck

You need an ash colour to go over bleached hair, so ash blonde or ash brown.

I realise this is too late now, but just for future reference. Put an ash dye on top, leave it a day and then re-dye if necessary. Then leave your hair alone for a while, it’s a lot of processing!

I read online that if I buy a purple conditioner and use as a hair mask by leaving on for about 20mins it may reduce the orange tones. I have no idea if it will work but at this point I will try anything to try and fix things. Problem is I need to leave the house to buy the bloody conditioner!!!!

Amazon prime?!

It's winter- wear a hat!

A bloody balaclava would be a better look than this awfil hair! God I'm dreading my ds getting up tomorrow morning - he's 5 and I can guarantee I will receive numerous hilarious comments about my 'new look' tomorrow!!!

It's probably not as bad as you think.

Can you get to boots or superdrug tomorrow?
Purple toner/ shampoo is what you need.

The bleach range has purple stuff.
It's not always called purple, could be blonde ash etc.

Ginger spice springs to mind...

Are you against going brown? Might be easier than trying to correct the blonde.

No I'm not against going brown but my hair is super fine and if I dye it again I'm going to wreck it so all I can do is try and salvage it with purple shampoo and conditioner!

I'd go for a semi permanent light brown. Semi permanents are much more gentle. But, if you can afford it (and even if you can't!) I'd go to the hairdressers. It will be far less stressful. And then home dye it from then on. Hope it goes well.

And actually, it doesn't look that bad. It looks one uniform colour. It's a real problem when it all goes patchy and the roots and lengths are different colours.

I use 9A nice and easy - its fab. Its peed my hairdresser off as she says and everyone agrees its better now than when I had highlights. Whatever you do though do not keep switching colours. It will end up a mess then.

Thanks ladies. I'm going to go out early doors to boots (minimises the chances of anyone seeing me) to get some purple products to see if that can just take the edge of the orange. I'm not looking to dye it again it will just wreck my hair so I'm going to have to ride it out somehow

Don’t panic, I can guarantee it doesn’t look as bad as you feel it does.

Use some purple products and just leave it to settle and within a few days it will calm down a bit.

Good luck OP but it really doesn’t look bad.

Came on here to say never use box dye. Just don't. For everyone who's had a good experiences there's 50 of us who went ginger. Just don't do it. I see it's too late.. I have been box dye ginger for 8 months, finally caved and paid a hairdresser to fix it last week. It's the only way!

Nobhobs I appreciate what you are saying but unfortunately I can no longer afford to visit the hairdressers so regularly for colour treatments. Now I'm going grey I need root touch ups so frequently that it just isn't financially affordable for me. Box dye is the only way for many of us unfortunately x

In my experience of using box due for thirty years I've never had a bad experience. I've had it done professionally and very expensively a few times and was underwhelmed. If you have common sense and are not completely cack handed box dyes are absolutely great.