How to go from dyed auburn hair to light brown

[threesecrets]

I have had my hair dyed auburn for about a year. It's really dark naturally so was initially bleached before the first colour and I want a change! The hairdresser warned me at the time that this would be hard but surely you can change colour? Anyone done this? What would be the next best step. Argh. Should have just gone for mid brown balayage time start with.

If you are going darker it is very simple to do. Anything lighter may not be so straight forward and if your wanting say a brown, you may for a while still have auburn tones throwing through as auburn, red, purple etc are quite stubborn sometimes but after a few applications over it will be fine xx

Get a colour remover product (such as color B4). It will remove the dye but your hair will still have yellow and orange tones due to the lightening /bleaching process used originally. However because it removes the actual colour/dye pigments from your hair (or the auburn dye) you should be able to then dye it light brown without too many red tones peaking back through again.
If you dye over it without removing the colour the red will shine through as it’s still on the hair underneath. Colour can’t remove colour - it just adds more in top.

It’s like if you rub a red crayon over paper and then rub brown crayon on top. It will look brown but you can still see the red. But if you scraped off all the red wax first then coloured the same spot brown it would look pretty much brown with only the faintest hint of red if you looked close enough.

Alternatively get a bleach bath done (not recommended to do yourself if you aren’t confident doing your own hair - it involves bleaching your hair with a bleach/shampoo mix). Hairdresser is probably best bet if you want to go down that route but it takes time and money to remove colour and add a new one.

*disclaimer, I’m not a hairdresser but have done enough to my own hair over (good and bad) the years and I’ve learned a fair bit in the process. (No pun intended)