How to correct dark brown gone orangish brown

Hi everyone,
I recently colored my hair and had an oops and decided to join this forum bcs of the great advice I saw given to others here.

My issue is, I have medium/dark brown neutral hair, and decided to color it a richer brown and get highlights. While at the store, I decided to be adventurous and ended up buying light golden brown instead (L'Oreal Excellence). I figured maybe it would not make my hair lighter, but I've had that happen before, so no big deal. Well, that was before I read anything about hair color. I used the dye without a strand test (will never do this again), left it on for about 50 minutes, and came out with orange medium brown hair. Argh! There is nothing light or golden about it. Tried living with it for about 10 days, but I can't do it anymore. Plus, now my roots are starting to peek through and I can tell it's going to look very different.

So, my goal is: to get it back to a medium/dark neutral brown that will need little maintenance, since if I still want to get highlights and don't want to have to maintain both all over color and highlights. I've since learned my hair has red-orange undertones, and so this is the natural result of lifting some color but not enough to get past the orange stage.

The possible solution (please advise for, against, or of any alternatives you think may work better): to use a blue based ash color with volume 20 developer to neutralize the color, doing a strand test first. Was thinking of Clairol Second Nature in either Light Smokey Ash Brown or Medium Ash Brown (this one may not be available here) or Medium Neutral Brown. Supposedly this product is meant for color correction, and does not lift color. Then, if all goes well, use L'Oreal Cremelights for highlights a couple of weeks later.

I thought about using colorfix but decided against since it seems to be best for removing darker colors, and seems to leave some people with orangish hair. Since what I want is to add color (don't mind ending up in a chocolate brown, just not black) and remove orange, I think I will skip it for now.

Any advice on this issue/plan would be greatly advised. I am hoping to this soon rather than later since I keep reading the longer color sets the harder it is to change... though I've had this orangish brown for about 10-15 days now. Thanks to all!

Susan W wrote: You are right, you don't need colorfix in this situation, it will likely only make it more orange and you want to go darker anyway.  You can use a medium brown shade with a blue base or a green base, and use a shade a little lighter than you want to end up with to insure that it won't come out black.  Test strand, like you said, to make sure your root area and ends come out even and don't need time adjustments.  As for your highlights though, after you put darker dye on it, those are going to be harder to lift.  Its not impossible, but I'm not a pro so I'm not the best person to advise you on how to go about doing that.

^^That sounds like it's going to work well Tisha! So glad to help. I bet your hair will look great with the highlights. Remember to leave the bleach on long enough to lighten past the orange/yellow stage. Bleach is often able to process up to 90 mins --- but watch it!