shampoo/hair dye

The good news:

you don`t have to bleach it out. In fact, you shouldn`t. There are MUCH better chemicals available to get the artificial color out that work by de-oxidizing the permanent/demi-permanent color and re-liquefying it back to the state it was in when it was first applied.

My favorite is Jheri Redding One `n Only Colorfix (available at Sallys). There`s also a European product called Schwarzkopf Modulat, but I like Colorfix a LOT better (Modulat is a runny clear-yellow liquid that smells like rotten eggs. Colorfix is a slimy white gel that doesn`t really have much of a smell).

The Bad News:

Demi-permanent oxidative color (the kind that claims to last for 28 days without lightening hair and generally lacks ammonia) comes out easily, but Permanent oxidative color (the kind that can lift and generally contains ammonia) usually requires mechanical extraction.

Basically, demi-permanent color clings to the outer part of the hair. As soon as it`s liquefied, it washes off easily. The problem is that permanent color molecules are physically inside the hair. They might be just as liquefied after 30 minutes exposure to the deoxidizing solution, but they`re perfectly content to remain inside the hair.

Think of it like a passenger jet with blown-out windows. Someone who`s small, lightweight, gets careless, and has really bad luck might get sucked out, but most people are too big to actually fit through and would just get stuck in the opening and wind up with frostbite -- even people who might be able to fit through a window entirely under ideal conditions if they REALLY tried. SO... to remove Permanent color, you need to liquefy it, then blast steam through the hair to nudge more of the old dye molecules outside so they can be washed away.

The REALLY bad news:

Few salons actually use color remover, except for REALLY high end ones that charge lots of money.

Why? To a salon, time = money. And de-oxidizing color removal is time-consuming (and, if steaming is required, labor-intensive). There`s also the psychological and business side... people know that bleach damages, and they know it`s complicated to use and requires lots of skill to use well, so they expect to pay a lot for it. On the other hand, just about anyone with a pulse can use color remover effectively with demi-permanent color, and could probably handle permanent too if they had a steamer.

The sensible thing to do would be for salons to train a lesser-paid employee (like the shampooers) to do the color removal while the more expensive stylist/colorist does someone else`s hair, but then they`d have to put up with grief from customers who felt they were somehow being neglected because "their" stylist didn`t do everything from start to finish. Not to mention the fact that salons don`t want color removal to look TOO easy, lest customers whose primary motivation for having it done professionally is the color removal aspect be tempted to remove AND color their own hair.

Ultimately, a professional with access to a steamer will almost certainly get far better results than someone using ColorFix at home... but then it becomes a value judgment of whether the better results actually matter. For someone going from dyed-black to bleached blonde, it probably matters a lot. For someone re-coloring graying medium brown hair with existing medium-brown demi-permanent who just wants to avoid buildup, it probably doesn`t. In between, there`s a huge gray continuum of balancing acts between actions, consequences, needs, and values.

Anyway, the short answer is, "Yes, products DO exist that can effectively remove old permanent and demi-permanent dye with minimal damage to the hair that don`t involve bleach, but you`re not likely to encounter them at a mid-priced assembly-line salon.