Dying Med/Dark Brown to Blonde problems

I do think you need to pre-lighten your dark brown hair before applying the blonde hair colour. I tried it in a salon before, but only for 2 streaks. This would involve using some strong ammonia solution to take away the dark red natural pigments in your hair so that the colour would show better. Since you did not pre-lighten yours on the first try, that explains the 'goldy blond'. I would advise to colour it in a salon if you are not expert at it. Sometimes we cannot predict for sure the outcome of the colour and it will turn out different than on the box's picture.

Hi. I am a male who has dyed his hair only once so I'm kind of a dunce on the the topic. I have medium to sort of dark brown hair and I wanted to dye it light blonde. I used Clarol (i think) Essence (that definitely was in the title) blonde highlighting and my hair went kind of goldy-blonde. I wanted a brighter lighter blonde (Calafornia style like if you know what I mean) ... Someone told me I might want to use Ash blonde because the "Essence" brand I used may of brought a natural red out. Any ideas?