dark blond result s in red tone?

 I had salt-n-pepper hair color, about 50 % of each. Got tired of so much grey at 45 and got it professionally dyed yesterday. I was looking for a golden brown color, and we decided the dark blond would achieve that. It turned out brownish/reddish. Was the dye left on too long? I don't really want to go the hassle of redoing it, but what should I do next time to not get these results. I'm avoiding all mirrors right now!

Thanks, Cindy

I'm not a pro, but I would have guessed either what she said (your gray hair was resistant and needed prelightening to help it be more porous to absorb dye), or that your pepper strands were very dark brown or black and you didn't get enough blue or green tone put in to counter the orange that comes out when dark hair is lifted.  She may have chosen not to use blue or green based dye on your pepper hair, because of your white hairs being at risk of turning green or blue.  Your hair can be complicated to do I imagine, because you don't want your white hair absorbing too much blue or green, but your dark hairs need blue or green bases when lifting to counter the red that comes out. 

I'm really not sure what the answer is for this, maybe just getting highlights so she can do different things to the different colors you have, but I hope I've helped to explain why there might have been a problem.

Thanks everyone for your input. I guess I understand why the darker color hair turned out this way, but I thought the lighter hair would just take on the blond color and I'd end up with "natural" highlights.  I wish I'd just gone with highlights and low-lights. Have a good day...

Cindy

Beanie, it sounds like what happened is that the 50% of your hair that is still dark, lightened with the peroxide and gave you a warm tone. Your hair must be in the Level 3 or 4 range? You will have a lot of red undertone lightening at that level. The white hairs probably did take the dark blonde true to tone, that's why you see 'brownish-red.' You either have to go with a darker ash blonde or brown or use bleach on the dark and then tone back to dark blonde. HTH!