Hair disaster!! Black box dye

[wanttokickoffbutcant]

I thought I had already posted about this but seems not....

My DD15 managed to dye her lovely natural blonde hair completely black with box dye. She meant to do a dip dye (??) so kind of the under bits of the ends dark and it went wrong. Any ideas to get the stuff out would be welcome before I have to get a second mortgage at a salon.......

This might be worth watching (He's a hair stylist and colorist)

Colour wow colour remover will take a lot but not all of the dye out. There are some things you need to know though.

1 - it smells quite strong
2 - follow the instructions religiously, they are not exaggerating when they say you need to really really rinse it out well.
3 - she needs to hold off on re-dying it afterwards and if/when you do dye it again you need to go for a lighter shade than you want the end result to be. This is because the corrector leaves the hair very porous so new colour takes very well and ends up darker.
4 - it won’t get the colour out 100% and she will most likely be left with a copper/reddish tint

A colour correction is going to cost a lot at the salon. My hairdresser said she charges double to sort it. I’d use the wow colour remover, only put it on the dyed parts and cling film it. Perhaps when most of it’s gone, put red henna at the bottom to do what she originally wanted. Henna washes out and isn’t damaging. Lush sell them too, Perhaps you can help?

I'd tell her to leave it black if she looks good - she might want to wear more/darker make up with it.
We did a home dye with my blonde teen daughter - just the tips of the hair - first blue then bright red. The blue washed out easily, the red was hell to get out. Tried all the home remedies, and then a shop-bought box dye colour remover, and it did eventually fade to a sort of pale orange. I told her never again!
I can tell you the home dye remover kits will not restore to her original colour - quite possibly will make it worse than the black.

Anything other than a colour reducer (like ColourB4 linked above) will do nothing other than cause damage and dryness.

The key to getting colour reducers to work is to rinse, rinse again, and once you think it's been fully rinsed out, keep rinsing.

You cannot use peroxide over it, but you can use a toner or true semi like Crazy Colour.

I suggest looking at Hair Buddha on YouTube. He reviews hair disasters and gives solutions to problems too. Please don’t use head and shoulders/fairy liquid/vitamin tablets etc. it will damage her hair so much. Tbh I think the best bet is to let it grow out.

@wanttokickoffbutcant if you have any big chain salons near you, it’s likely they do “training” days. This means they sort her out for free so their staff get trained

worth a call (any salon even not just popular ones )

Henna does not wash out, it’s permanent!

My DD tried colour correction and got a ginger ring on the back of her head. Had to dye it back black to cover it 😂😂

Head & Shoulders probably won't do much damage but vitamin C will.

I'd head to Superdrug and buy Superdrug Colour Rewind Hair Colour Remover | Hair | Superdrug. (you might need 2 boxes for long hair. Check.)
Read the instructions carefully and follow them to the letter.

I did this.

It went green when I put a brown dye over it so dont do that. It will be a pricess and will take a while. Mine was still green tinged and I had to cut it out.

Colour corrections/removals cost so much in a salon because they are unpredictable and potentially require umpteen products/stages, so much depends on the condition of the client's hair and the original product used it is impossible to predict what you will need to do to reach the desired outcome.

It could be as simple as a couple of boxes of colour reducer and some purple shampoo, or it could mean several rounds of bleach and a full head of various different colours to give a final even colour.

The first step for any decent stylist would always be a colour reducer so you may as well give that a whirl at home.

I second this. I faded my very dark, perm dyed for years with this. Enough to put a light brown over it a couple of weeks later.

She may have a ginger cast to her hair (this is the underlying redness of the black dye).

Agree with everyone else that short of a major bleach and then redye job, it's unlikely to come out.

If it's semi perm it might fade.

Another option that might tone it down a BIT would be to dye over it with something with a lot of red in it (use semi perm, NOT perm). So it would still be black, but it would probably pick up a few red tints that would make it feel less solid? Depending on her colouring, I'd pick something in the mahagony/cherry range more likely to avoid it shifting to orange.

Colour remover, applied properly all over as per instructions.
Then a bleach bath, still damaging but not as much.
whatever the darkest shade is that’s left after that, get a toner that shade and pop it all over & she’ll just need to live with that colour for a good 6-8 weeks until it regens enough to survive a round of full bleach.

look up brad mondo videos on YouTube on it & you can’t go wrong. Just don’t try to get dark spots lighter once you’ve removed & done bleach bath, just settle it all to the darkest tone to avoid more breakage

I went from box black hair dye to blonde.

A decent salon can use a colour remover to strip most of it out. Then I had some highlights put in which lightened it even more. You aren’t going to go from jet black to baby blonde overnight but you can certainly lighten it significantly. I went from permanent black dyed hair to completely honey blonde in about 7 months. I went through a ton of olaplex and k18 during that period 🤣

My daughter stripped her dyed black hair with the Colour Be gone. It turned her hair very orange, which actually suited here in a weird way! I gradually highlighted it for her over a period of a year - it took ages!

I did this at about the same age 20+ years ago. Albeit I deliberately dyed it all black and then decided I hated it! I begged my mum to fix it and I ended up with 3 or 4 bleach baths over the course of a few weeks at a salon known as good for colour work. I have very thick and strong hair so it didn’t all melt off my head thankfully. Lots of conditioning treatments and then a semi permanent over the top at the end meant I looked fairly presentable! It’s a rite of passage I think that a lot of us go through! But I don’t think it’s going to be something you can fix at home 😬

The orange is from where the peroxide in the black box dye has lifted the natural colour. If OP's DD is naturally blonde, she should be more yellow than orange; it's nothing that cannot be sorted with a decent toner.

Some leave staining behind on the cuticle, but these are usually greenish rather than orange and need bleaching out. If that happens, I would go to a salon to finish it. Messing with lightener at home can go very wrong, very quickly, especially when box dyes are in the mix. Some box dyes react very badly to lighteners and can cause serious chemical burns.

Box black dye isn’t the hardest to get out, it’s actually one of the easiest with a colour remover. Don’t even consider trying to bleach it out.

@wanttokickoffbutcant go to Superdrug and buy a box of this or this. Read the instructions a few times before you start and make sure you’ve got a timer of some sort to hand. Follow the instructions to the letter and it should get rid of the dye.

Your daughter will be left with a gingery colour as box dye bleaches the colour out of the natural hair before it deposits its own colour. Don’t panic! It’ll also be really, really dry, so do a deep conditioning treatment.

Then, get some Nice n Easy NON-PERMANENT (very important) in a 7. or 8. colour and put that on. It should go a nice light-medium brown. Job done.

Hairstylist here !!
I would avoid salons they will probs use a bleach bath and I wouldn't recommend!
If u have a salon service or Sally's beauty go in and get a box of colour undo !
It's the only one that won't actually damage the hair use and see where it lifts to usually u will be left with warmth and u can use colour undo a couple of times ! See instructions !!
Because u will have warmth u can then go over with a brown but not dark as it may grab so maybe a level 7 or 8 with a 1 after if u want it to knock the warmth out if u prefer warmth the just use 7 or 8 N
You can use salan services Sally's beauty it's open to non stylists good luck x

I mean over time it fades and isn’t damaging for the hair, not that it washes out in one go!

Don't use colour undo at home; it is a bleach-based product, it's brilliant at what it does, but it's not meant for box dyes, some of which can contain metals that react badly with bleach.

Use a colour reducer or go to a salon and insist they do a patch test before using any bleach products.

One, fairly fresh application of box dye should come out easily enough with a colour reducer; the only issue you might have is staining, especially if the black is blue-based, at which point you should go to a salon and ask them to finish it off or colour over it with a lighter brown.

You could try colour b4 or oops.
If that dont work cut it or grow it out.

I had a hair disaster a few year back and I thought fuck it, I got the shavers out and went bald, like the blade only was used.

Its grown back now and I never used dye again.

What we did with my DD last summer when she coloured her hair with bright red dye and it did not washed out by the time the school started in September and she was in a huge trouble with the school. We mixed head&shoulders with soda bicarbonate and lemon juice and put that mixture on the hair for about 15-20 minutes and then washed off. It wil remove some of the dye. After about 5-6 washes like that the colour was more or less acceptable.PS: And don'r forget to use mousturiser mask after each wash. Good luck!