How can I have nice hair?

[Arsebucket]

Trivial I know, but it’s getting me down.

Is there anyway I can sort my hair out at home?

I had beautiful reddish brown hair, but I started to go grey at 30. So I stated dying it. I can’t afford to go to a hair dresser, so it was home dyes.

About 7 years ago, I really messed up and dyed it too dark.

and it’s stayed that way.

I’m now entirely grey under the dye, and my hair is a mess of different dyes (all dark brown, I stick to the same brand but it’s awful). They grey comes through so fast, ideally I would need to do roots every 3 weeks but Incant afford to buy a box of dye that often.

I don’t want to go grey, I’d look terrible.

I want lighter hair again, the dark brown just drags me down.

I’ve not done anything for a couple of months and now I have a halo of three inches of grey/white around my head, crappy dark dye on the rest. I feel so terrible about myself.

Like I said, I really can’t afford a hairdresser (I go for an £8 dry trim once a year, there’s no way I’d ever be able to afford to get it sorted professionally we’re just not in the position to).

How can I sort it at home? I’m 41 and I just feel like an old woman.

@thisisnotmyllama

Oh, I so feel your pain!

I’m a decade older than you but have been greying since my 30s. I’ve used box dyes for years & years - at first because I just wanted to change up my boring brown hair into something funkier, and then later out of necessity to cover grey roots (kind of wish now that I’d just enjoyed my natural colour while I had it, but hey ho!) I hate hate hate going to the hairdresser. I’m dyspraxic with probable PDA (neurodivergent condition) which means I can’t bear people ‘doing stuff’ to me and feel ultra-judged in such settings. Plus like you I find the cost very prohibitive. I maybe pluck up the courage to go to the hairdresser about once every two years (but currently approaching 3.5 years and counting!).

Anyway several times now I’ve attempted to ‘embrace the grey’ because it seemed like that was what I was supposed to do (?). I’m not bothered about cutting my hair short so I just cut off the dyed parts. But the thing was - when all I can see is my roots, they look very very grey to me, and it convinces me that my hair is grey all over, but actually, when I see it chopped off, it’s nowhere near as grey as I think! In fact it looks patchy and awful - not even a nice, even salt & pepper, but just dark with random chunks of grey.

So it’s quite possible that your ‘terrible’ grey really isn’t that bad! If your natural colour is anything less than black or very dark brown, it’s unlikely you’ll be genuinely white all over at 41. My mum was completely silvery grey by her early 40s but her original colour was black. Mine was more ‘medium brown’ (hate that description!) and I’m way less grey than she was.

Anyway I know the current trend is to stop dyeing dark brown but I decided that I don’t care. I’ve tried some other colours over the last few years (red, plum, even an ill-advised bleach job) and concluded I just don’t like the look of myself with these hair colours. I know the dark brown looks fake but honestly I don’t see why it’s ok for young women to dye their hair obviously fake colours, but once we hit 40+ or 50+ it becomes ‘sad’. It’s just ageism and misogyny at the end of the day.

So I say either embrace the dark brown, or try a new funky colour if your work permits that kind of thing, or steel yourself for a few months of growing out, followed by a short cut (but please go to the hairdresser for that one - take it from a veteran of self-administered haircuts!) and then you can assess what degree of grey you really have, and decide where to go from there.

In the meantime, a silk (or similar) scarf wrapped around your head as an Alice band or vintage ‘turban’ type arrangement - think Angel from Escape to the Chateau! - is your friend, to help cover the roots.

I know it’s seems like most people I know are embracing grey hair now. Good for them, I just don’t want to!

For what it’s worth, my grandmother was 96 when she died and was still dying her hair medium brown. She always said that she might be an old lady, but it didn’t mean she had to look like one.

@Arsebucket

Any recommendations for. good colour remover?

I am white now and have about five inches of new growth with the old colour hanging on in there despite my using colourB4 remover several times. It will only lighten the old dye, it will not remove it.

Ex hairdresser here also, I often go too dark in a moment of thinking it will suit me - I always regret it.
I would strip as much as you can, it won't be perfect but it will allow you to put a medium/dark ash blonde on.
Then I pull through some H/Lights just to blend all (the unevenness) together.
After a couple of weeks most of the warm tones gave settled down and it looks fine.

@Anordinarymum I used colour b4 extra strength to get blue black out the one time I did it - It worked well and left me with copper. My mistake after that was going too dark again 🤦🏽‍♀️ I really should have used a much lighter shade.

I will use that one again I think.

And do what someone up thread said, so it once condition well for a couple of weeks and then do it again.

I have used fairy liquid and baking soda which both lifted some colour and then the colour B4 and more than once......... All of them are damaging and when I realised that the colour was not going to lift any more I started conditioning and resigned myself to letting it grow out. Plus... I keep cutting an inch off the length so the goal is in sight.

I'm currently using the 'curly girl' method so am concentrating on cultivating curls rather than fixating too much about the colour which is something I can't change now. I'm looking on it as a sort of journey instead of feeling bad about it.

Doing the 'curly girl' has sort of made the grey bits blend into the colour and people say it looks like I have had it done that way. I think they are just being kind but there you go :)

The permanent colour they sell in Poundland and Savers for £1, Derma V10 is very good. I use it every 2-3 weeks to cover my grey and it's the cheapest you can get. It's vegan and cruelty free too. It comes with a 6%/20 vol peroxide developer like a lot of permanent dyes but I've started diluting the developer 1:1 with conditioner to make 3%/10 vol which doesn't seem to affect the longevity but will hopefully stop it being so damaging. I also only dye my roots and don't over dye the ends as they don't seem to fade anyway. I'm 34 and definitely don't want to go grey so I feel your pain.

Why is it that dark brown looks fake? I'm 43 and still have dark brown, nearly black hair with very few greys at the temples. I've not dyed it since I was a teenager. Is it something about the dye over greys that makes it look fake?

@Juancornetto

Why is it that dark brown looks fake? I'm 43 and still have dark brown, nearly black hair with very few greys at the temples. I've not dyed it since I was a teenager. Is it something about the dye over greys that makes it look fake?

My hair looks fake dark brown because it’s obviously a bad dye job and patchy.

People do assume I’m naturally very dark haired as I have dark olive skin, very dark eyes and eyebrows. But my hair was always lighter than you’d expect (I always used to get asked where i’d had it done when I was younger as it looked so “natural”, no one believed it was my real hair!)

[quote Arsebucket]@Anordinarymum I used colour b4 extra strength to get blue black out the one time I did it - It worked well and left me with copper. My mistake after that was going too dark again 🤦🏽‍♀️ I really should have used a much lighter shade.

I will use that one again I think.

And do what someone up thread said, so it once condition well for a couple of weeks and then do it again.[/quote]
Use a semi permanent after colourb4 I also recommend going a shade lighter Than you actually want as your hair really grabs the colour after the remover. Good luck 🤞

From the picture, your hair doesn't look anywhere near like I pictured from your description. It's not that bad at all!
Do you have friends/ friends dc's that might help?
Have you tried hair dye remover, then bleach, then re- dye?