Had hair dyed black - is it possible to lighten?

[cosmicqueen]

I had my hair dyed black with permanent colour at the hairdressers last year and now I'd really like to have it lightened to brown. Yesterday the hairdresser did a strand test as my hair is very porous. She put a tint on one end which didn't budge the colour at all. On the other end she put bleach which damaged my hair. She called today and said she wouldn't lighten my hair at this stage. I was advised to regularly use protein conditioning treatments for at least the next 8weeks before having another strand test.

Has anyone else with porous hair managed to lighten their hair successfully without compromising condition too much? I guess I just want to know if it's possible. And if so did you have to do it gradually with highlights etc? I'm going to use treatments for the next couple months to strengthen my hair as recommended. Then I will try again!

My hairdresser recommends using head and shoulders to gradually strip away colour. Maybe this would help.

I've tried Head and Shoulders and it didn't lighten or fade the colour. Vosene was the same. Think it's maybe because porous hair absorbs a lot of colour!? Also tried ColourB4 and that lightened my hair a little bit but not evenly.....i have a brassy orange patch. Just scared to used it again in case I damage my hair more.

ColourB4 can dry out your hair but it’s not bleach so won’t do the same kind of damage. You can use it more than once, you just need to make sure you rinse for a LONG time to get all the colour molecules out of your hair. Also your hair will go orange, so you would need to dye over it once it’s taken some of the pigment out.
Alternatively I once had my hair dyed and it turned out way darker than I wanted. I did the “vitamin c method” (Google it) and it lightened it to a brown, but you can’t really be sure of the outcome so I’d only do it if you’re desperate.

I’m doing the ‘grow it out and cover with highlights’ route and I’m really not a fan but I can’t see a better alternative.

My roots are lighter than the rest of my hair (although only subtlety) and I don’t think it looks good. But I’m trying to be patient to so I can get rid of the black without damaging my hair too much.

I had balayage on the ends and curl it a lot so the colour change isn’t as stark. But the black still feels stark to me.

Jo Baz max colour remover in the red box, £5 from savers or £10 on Amazon. I've taken mine from box dye black back to a colour light enough to dye cooper. No bleach so it's not damaging and you can recolour same day if you want (you can't with some other brands)