ruined hair with box dye, hair stylist says she can't dye over

[OstrichRunning]

In recent years, my hair has gone quite grey, white in front. I used to go to a great salon where they put in v natural looking highlights. But recently I moved to a small town, and shortly after moving on a whim decided to dye it 'lightest ash blonde' (had pretty bad roots by then, it needed something). Used two boxes. Total disaster. Some went yellow, some stayed white. Just awful. Eventually found a salon in a nearby town with a good reputation, but the stylist just dyed my new roots eith a permanent dye, and on the lengths she put a semi-permanent, saying that a permanent shade would turn the hair too dark. That was about 4 weeks ago and now it looks pretty much as bad as it did initially . She also gave me a really crap haircut.

Sorry for the boring thread, but I've no idea what to do now. I can't believe I have to just grow this mess out. Any hair stylists / dye experts out there who could advise? Wou l more permanent over the existing dyed hair really make it darker?

I did this years ago. Sadly the only thing that worked to cover the lot up was to put a very dark brown colour on it. Sorry I can’t be more help x

Some hairdressers offer “colour correction” but it’s costly. Might be worth a google in the area where you live.
I’ve done the same myself with box dye - dark rich brown and I looked like Dracula’s mother.

You can pay to have the colour stripped from your hair. Google it. It's sort of like bleaching, but it removes the dye, not the natural colour. It's not great for your hair, and not super cheap, but might be worth it if you have no other options.

Thanks everyone. I'll check out the colour correction.

Hairdresser here. First of all you can’t “strip” blonde, so don’t ask that!

In your situation I would put in a full head of hilites and possibly a lowlite(a warm 8, no darker) to break up the bad colour and tint the roots in between the hilites.

That would make a huge difference and would correct the color without costing you a fortune

Try a better salon!

Just to clarify colouring your hair blonde means you have removed all natural colour from your hair.

Stripping colour is basically just a form of bleaching it until it’s light enough to change it.

There used to be professional products that actually could remove artificial colours from the hair but they always annoyingly get discontinued.

Just make an appt somewhere else. Tell them you don’t like the colour, you want to stay blonde and you’d like hilites and a root colour to sort it out

Thanks Lorelai! I'm sure back for roots soon so will ask for your suggestion. I'd live that to work.

Codename I would but I think that's the best one that's local Don't want to go somewhere too far as will be and out a lot it looks like. I might call them in advance. Think the person I got might not be very experienced...

*due back
*love

cross post there.

Hmmm, yep maybe somewhere else is in order. If I can find it.

There's definitely a cautionary tale in here.

Thanks again

Try looking for salons who have different prices based on hairdressers experience. From my experience that is generally the best if you don't know a hairdresser already. It generally means more expensive but it's worth the better quality. I've been to a few different places and ones with just the generic price have done either pretty badly or somewhat of an average job even though they were one of the highest rated in the area. Went to a place where they have different pricing depending on experience, went with middle of the ground person and had the best outcome out of all of those. Have been going to them for the last 3 years and never considered anything else even if I'm paying double or triple the price depending on what I want to get done.

That's a good tip, Em. The place I went to originally does just that. I've just looked on their website and realise I got someone relatively new, ie cheaper. Think I'm going to ask for a senior stylist there for next time. And ask for the highlights/roots thing.

update, just in case anyone comes across this thread in the same boat - I went to new stylist. She dyed roots, and did full head of highlights, all ash blonde shades. Put toner on remaining hair. After washing out all that, she put toner on again, this time throughout. It worked brilliantly