Natural looking brown hair dye for first greys?

[hungariantea]

I have longish mid to dark brown hair. For the past few years I have been getting the odd grey or rather white hair which is noticable against my dark hair. Last year I started trying to dye it and used a schwarzkopf box dye called Only Love in Truffle Brown which I liked but has been discontinued already. I then tried schwarzkopf poly tint in mid brown which was too reddish and then John Frieda in 5N Natural Brown which was the worst, way too reddish /orange and too light. All the boxes said they were a level 5.0 but have a wide variety of results on my hair.

In addition to this none really covered my white hair or it seemed to wash out of the white hair very quickly. The best was the Truffle Brown from schwarzkopf's Only Love range which most people said complained was too dark / black but it was only a touch dark on my hair and I liked the colour as a deep non reddish brown.

Ideally I want a hair dye that will cover my white hairs and be as close as possible to my darkish brown hair with no orangey reddish tones when the light hits or not too much. I want a product I can rely on to be around for a while so I can commit to a particular shade. I don't want to lighten my hair at all so I prefer as low a percent developer as possible.

My hair type is wavy and quite course and porous (looking at the charts 2A or 2B). i have hazel eyes and very pale skin with an gold/olive undertone.

I am happy to buy from a salon shop or online if no box dyes will work well for me. I think some of the casting creme cool brunette colours look nice but I doubt they would colour my white hairs as they are semi permenent.

I just want to colour my white hairs and for it to look as natural as possible!

Any advice?

I would rather do this at home as I hate the salon unfortunately!

I used to use Garner Nutrisse number 5. I don't remember it having red tones

I use Olia 5.0 - Brown. It's a nice medium brown with no red that I can see. I have also used Garnia in the past that PP has mentioned so I vote for that one too. The conditioner it comes with is amazing!

Or if you want darker go for a 4 rather than 5

I use esalon online. You can pick from full colour charts, upload pics of your current colour and your preferred colour. I've a tricky red-blonde shade and they get it spot on

@dementedpixie I don't want darker as such, just not lighter or too reddish. I think the developer might be to strong in some of the box dyes and it is actually lightening my hair a bit which I don't want.

@Hailingfrequenciesopen Thanks i will check those dyes out!

@Thesheerrelief That sound good I will have a look at that site!

Sounds like you want an ash brown shade, if you want to avoid the red tones.
I also like to avoid red tones and use Clairol Nice n Easy 5A Medium Ash Brown

I buy Wella Illumina Color plus a developer (Wella Welloxon Perfect 6% 20vol) and then use a conditioner (Wella Invigo Color Service) after to neutralise the PH level to prevent creeping oxidisation).

My hair is a neutral brown so I buy 6/ or 7/. The forward slash denotes a neutral tone rather than red or gold.

The Wella site has colour charts. These are the products used in salons so I'm happy I'm not damaging my hair as much as using a box dye.

The dye and developer are mixed together 50/50 and I use a little mixing bowl to weigh them on a digital scale.

For a few grey hairs, semi permanent is absolutely fine and is generally better than permanent when doing box dyes. I use Clairol or L'Oreal and have had no problems. As a rule, they come out darker than you expect so I tend to use "light brown" or "iced chocolate" (5.0 or 5.1 I think) and it comes out fairly dark. if your hair is a bit darker than mine, I'd go a shade or two beyond that, choosing ones without any red if that's what you want.

For semi permanent, make sure you leave it on for the full amount of time. After the first time, you may feel it didn't quite cover enough, in which case, for the second time, leave it on for an extra 3 minutes or so. I think you could go up to an extra 5 if necessary. If it's supposed to be 20 minutes, I'll set an alarm for 20 minutes then very casually start wandering into the shower only at that point so it's on for a bit longer really.

@SpaceOP I could try a semi permanent I just worry that as my greys are actually pure white they won't get covered up properly.

@CoffeeChouxBun Yes exactly I want an ashy brown colour.

@PragmaticWench

That sounds good, I will take a look at the website and see if I can see what would work for me.

[quote hungariantea]@SpaceOP I could try a semi permanent I just worry that as my greys are actually pure white they won't get covered up properly.[/quote]
Honestly, my grey hair is pretty white and I've actually got quite a few (30% maybe now?) - semi permanent works just fine although I am definitely giving it an extra 3-4 minutes which I didn't need to do before. Semi permanent does not work on grey if you have more than 50% grey, but with just a few, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

@SpaceOP Ok will give one of te casting creme dyes a go while I research other options and see how it goes as I have nowhere near 50% grey yet.

You need to look for a colour that has ash in it... as that removes the red. Anything else will tend to show up as red/orange on greys. I usually go for clairol or L'Oréal when I do a top up dye in between salon colour. I have quite stubborn white hair which requires a permanent colour and me leaving it on for longer than they instructions suggest.

Oh, and one thing - if your hair absorbs a lot of liquid and is quite long, consider buying two. My hair is very thick and porous. One is enough as long as it isn't any longer than a bit below my shoulders. When I briefly had my hair longer to sort of just below my shoulder blades, I found I needed a second box. My hair is very short now so one is fine and I don't use all of it, even though they tell you that you should as its just too much.

Garnier Belle Colour no.5 medium brown is a nice natural colour that I always revert back to. Tesco sell it.