QuoteReplyTopic: Advice needed for a hair dye disaster Posted: October 17 2004 at 7:37am
I've had a home dye disaster and would really appreciate some advice to recover from it.
I have (had) light brown hair which was highlighted in chunks professionally 6 months ago. The result was great but, 6 months down the line, I had lots of dark roots on the chunks and no money to go back and get my hair done again.
So I turned to the home dye and decided to try and even up the colour all over to my natural one. Problem, my hair came out a bright orange/red and really didn't look good. A friend advised me to use a blonde dye and take it lighter - I used a Clairol one for that this morning and, to my horror, my hair has come out very light yellow with glaring orange tones in places. It's so awful that I can honestly say I'm not leaving the house until it's fixed or someone brings me a huge hat!
The same friend is now suggesting going another load of bleach to get rid of the orange tones but, as far as I can see, it's going to end up the horrible pale yellow colour of the roots. What I want is to end up a dark honey blonde, or light brown without the brassy bits!
Going to a professional isn't an option as I'm flat broke at present so I'm going to have to fix this the home dye way. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do next? Now it's dyed out to this pale straw/orange colour, is it safe to whack a brown permanent over the top?
Any answers appreciated as, right now, a lovely thick head of shoulder-length hair looks ruined beyond all repair and I am, to put it mildly, panicing!
I really do wish you could go to a salon, getting it professionally fixed is a lot safer than trying to do it yourself. Do you have a friend or family member that could lend you the money, who you could then pay back?
If you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT go to a salon (which I highly recommend), you must go to a Sally or other beauty supply shop to get what you'll need, not a drug store. You will need 20 volume developer and 2 bottles of dye. What I would do in your situation is buy 2 bottles of dye that are as close as you can get to your natural color (yes, both bottles the same color, but with a different "base" which will be written on the color), or the blond that you want, but they have to have the right base. You will have to divide the hair up and dye the orange pieces with dye that has a green base (green will counteract the orange), and you will have to dye the yellow hair with matching dye that has a violet base (violet counteracts yellow). You don't want to put the green base dye on the yellow hair because then you'll get an overly ashy tone, and you don't want the violet base dye on the orange hair because it won't take out the orange.
You have to realize that this is risky, and the two separate sections of hair may not come out exactly the same color, and over time, they may fade to slightly different colors. I would go with a slightly darker color than you want to wind up with, because it will come out lighter on yellow hair and wash out slightly over time, even if it's permanant.
Good luck, and please go to a salon if there is any way you can.
Making metal barettes/concord clips hair safe, long hair style how to: http://alonghair.wordpress.com
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Susan is right. You will have to go darker if you try to fix this problem at home. Permanent hair dye won't lighten permanent hair dye. I'm a little confused by your post -- was the Clairol product colour or bleach? If it was bleach, be careful. Bleaching again could cause significant damage and you could end up with uneven results again -- just yellower and brittle. Whatever you do, don't try applying a hi-lift blonde colour. You could end up with more orange and possibly some green.
Try posting your problem on the Going Blonde message board at http://www.network54.com/Forum/127834. Address your question to Rick and Toyota in the subject line. They have a lot of expertise in this area and are very helpful.
I had a similar hair colour disaster and tried to fix it with bleach and toners. I eventually used permanent light brown dye to get rid of my hideous peach-y hair. I was trying to save money, but ended up spending more fixing my mistakes than I would have spent going to a salon in the first place and now I have brown hair -- which was not my goal. I'm now planning on going to a salon to get the blonde I wanted. Maybe you should consider wearing some fun hats or hair scarves (like Nicole Richie) for a while and saving up for a visit to a pro. By the way, I used Nice 'N Easy Light Ash Brown to fix my disaster. It counteracted the yellow and orange and came out quite even -- no greenish tinge. This may just be luck, though. Everyone's hair is different.
Good luck.
My user name is WAY too long. Just call me Juliana. :-)
Many thanks for the replies and advice thus far. It's pretty hard to describe how the colour is now so I thought the best thing to do was take a picture - it's not great, but the best I could do with my phone.
The first picture is how my hair looks when it has a few chunky highlights - this was done at Tony & Guy but costs �130 a time (ie $235). After six months the blonde you can see had over an inch of mid-brown roots and it was looking awful. Unfortunately I lost my job due to illness (CFS) and that's why I haven't had it done professionally since - it's also why I can't really borrow the money from friends/family and go to another professional as I really don't know when I'll be well enough to work again and pay it back. So it's down to home dye and lots of luck.
The second picture is how the colour looks due to the disaster..as you can see, it ain't pretty! I honestly don't care which colour I plonk on it now as long as it looks different - a dark brown is cool with me if it's going to work. The colour that made it go like this was Clairol's Herbal Essence XL10 'dazzling moonlight' light blonde. Do you think that the 53 Light Golden Brown would help?Clairol Shade Chart
Before:
After Disaster:
korsakovhatt3
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If I were you I would stay away from golden shades (you might end up with red hair). I would suggest an ash shade. Neutral might work too, but I got peach hair using a neutral shade. Whatever you use, just make sure you do a test strand first. The last thing you need is another disaster.
Your experience just proves my point about everyone's hair being different. I am always extolling the virtues of Herbal Essences XL10. I had amazing results with it (but on virgin hair).
I'm sad to hear about your illness. I can relate. I was unable to work for nearly four years because of an inner ear disease. Like you, I had no idea when or if I would feel well enough to work and money was always tight. I am just now preparing to head back to work full-time. Try to keep your spirits up. I hope you feel better soon.
P.S. I'm sure you've tried lots of things for CFS and are probably constantly receiving unsolicited advice. I have to mention one thing, though. When I was a university student I worked part-time as a nanny for a woman who was very ill with CFS. She had been ill for a number of years and wasn't getting better. Then she went on a special rotating diet which was designed to starve the candida yeast in her system. After a few months of the diet, she was feeling much better. You may have already tried this, but I thought I'd pass it along just in case you hadn't heard of it. Here's a link, just in case you're interested. http://www.drtoth.com/Candida.html
My user name is WAY too long. Just call me Juliana. :-)
In the end I got a Nice & Easy Medium Ash Brown and left it on for 15 minutes. This seems to have come out well (picture below) and has some pretty ashy tones in it when the light hits. So all's well that ends well!
On the CFS side of things, I've done an exclusion type diet before that was testing for allergies and candida etc but didn't bring anything up. Now I do a GI diet as it seems to manage the symptoms better.
I was going to tell you I wouldn't go with that 53 because it looked like it had red tones in it, but it looks like the Nice and Easy fixed you up nice! Congratulations, and glad it worked out well!
Making metal barettes/concord clips hair safe, long hair style how to: http://alonghair.wordpress.com
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Your hair looks great! It's funny. I used Nice 'N Easy LIGHT Ash Brown on my hair (to fix a disaster) and my hair is medium brown now. Your colour turned out much better than mine.
My user name is WAY too long. Just call me Juliana. :-)
Thats exactly what has happened to my hair, its awful except my hair is even lighter than that, its the most revolting color ever. Im so upset about it i wish i'd never done it now. Can u let me know what u use for yours and if it turns out ok?
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