Going from blonde to light brown

Is your hair white or yellow?  Does it have any white in it at all, even just highlighted looking pieces?  If its white fillers are especially important, but I'd consider white a level 10, not 7 or 8, so your hair must be yellow.  (Yellow would be medium blonde, but you say you are light blonde to light brown...these are very different shades, is your hair highlighted or different shades?)

If it is yellow, you many not even need a filler, just choose a light brown one shade darker than you want to end up with (that means still light brown, just one dyed swatch darker - yes, porous blonde hair will help the dye slide out instead of holding too much in, that's why darker for this time where you may see people recommend 2 shades lighter for going darker than light brown).  The light brown should have a violet base.  The base is very important because it will counter the yellow...if you use the wrong base, you could get green hair, or reddish hair.

The filler may not be bad per se though, you just might not need it.  If you can't find a light brown with a violet base, definitely go for the filler.  Test strand everything of course, just to make sure, like you say! 

25 minutes is enough, since you are going darker.  45 tends to be used if you need extra lift because you are going lighter.



Edited by Susan W - November 09 2007 at 8:32am

I just went form blonde to light brown and tried just about everything out there including permanents, semi-permanents from professional beauty supply stores, etc.... The thing that worked best for me was casting colorspa light golden brown. It all depends on the exact shade of brown you're going for though. If you want to keep gold tones, there's no need to try and cancel out the yellow with violet. If you want a very neutral light brown then I would just use neutral light brown. In my experience, there's no need to use a controlling color when going darker. What color are you trying to achieve?