Is this a bad idea? Home hair dye...

[CoffeeMum]

I recently wanted to ditch my bad blonde highlights and go back to my natural mid-brown hair colour - so the hairdresser 'neutralized' the blonde highlights, and then dyed it to my natural colour. However, it has faded over time, so is started to look lighter where the highlights were, and the regrowth [and grey ] is starting to show.

I thought i'd just get the colour topped up at the salon, but they've quoted me £60 - and part of the reason i wanted to ditch the highlights was to be free of hefty salon bills.

Would it be a really bad idea to dye my hair brown at home? Surely now that the highlights have been 'neutralized', i can safely do home dye at home? I am happy to have it a bit too dark, and let it fade, and keep topping up, but i just don't want to end up with orange hair, or something plain disastrous!

All advice gratefully received, thank you

I reckon it would be OK.

now that you have had a salon colour and your highlights neutralised you should be fine colouring your hair at home, especially as you want a dark brown.

go for it!

Hooray - thanks both.

I also thought that if it did all go horribly wrong, i could still get it fixed at a salon if it came to it. But i'd rather avoid shelling out £60 if i possibly can...

try to use a herbal dye if you can, daniel field is good. or lush (but haven't tried that).

any of those high street ones where you mix two bottles together contain peroxide which will do your hair no favours.

also i recently read that it actually causes hair to lose pigment, not sure if that is true or not but i am very grey and used to dye my hair with non-herbal stuff (for about 20 years eek i started early!)

Thanks fishie - the hairdresser used Aveda, so i would like to stick with as natural a product as possbile. Do you know if Daniel Field is widely stocked? - eg. most Boots and Superdrug?

d field not very expensive to experiment - i use red based ones which start to wash out in about 6 weeks. i prefer that to getting roots too.

I think you need to wait for herbal dyes to wash out (or even grow out?) before using "chemical" dyes, so you'd need to stick to herbal ones for a while afterwards. As to home-colouring, yes, go for it, esp since you want to go darker.