Help with too dark, permanent color
Printed From: HairBoutique.com
Category: Hair Talk
Forum Name: Hair Color
Forum Description: The tricks and tribulations of changing your hair color
URL: https://talk.hairboutique.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=40059
Printed Date: November 23 2025 at 5:38am
Topic: Help with too dark, permanent color
Posted By: pasdebourre
Subject: Help with too dark, permanent color
Date Posted: February 12 2006 at 2:55pm
| The saga continues. Went to professional colorist to try to get back on track after five years of using home hair color to maintain natural dark brown color while covering gray. Had used Robert Craig permanent color successfully until it began to pull too red (in part because I experimented with all the brown shades and even a blond shade). Used Loreal Excellence in an ash brown to try to counter red and it came out very dark red brown. ColorFix removed dark color but left me with an orangey light brown. Asked colorist to take me back to natural shade but she convinced me I needed warmer shades and initially used semi-perm Goldwell formula that was lovely. Gray was a caramel color and rest of hair was warm medium-to-dark brown. But left me with problem of very obvious dark roots and of course grays after three weeks. On second visit asked her to take me closer to natural shade, in order to avoid dark roots, and she used Goldwell permanent color in 5A range, with 10-level at roots to cover gray and 20-level elsewhere. I am left with way too dark, almost black hair, especially where she used the 10-level near the front of my face. I was happier with what I achieved on my own with Robert Craig. So, how to lighten this almost-black color? Robert Craig website suggests a mild bleach formula with strand test of course. What else will work to lighten this goth look, preferably something I can do on my own? |
Replies:
Posted By: ammonia
Date Posted: February 12 2006 at 7:59pm
omg i thought i was on the safe side when i put a med. brown color on my light hair and it turned out pretty good that is until the next day i actually saw it in the daylight and seen how horrible it had come out. i called a few salons and some refused to work on my hair being that ive bleached it in the past alot and i guess for their protection they wont wanna touch it  and some said i needed a color correction and it would cost me around $80-100 per hour!!! it only made sense to me that the only way to get rid of dark color is to lighten it duh! no color is gonna do that except bleach! so there i go.. i just did a strand test with manic panic flash lightin 30vol.. 5 minutes passed and it was already blonde  now im gonna do my whole head and just leave it that long, at least it will be way lighter.. then ill tone it. good luck with yours too and the best advice i can give u if you dont have alot of money, do it yourself.. u can mix bleach with shampoo and it will be less damagin aka less strong so you can monitor the color changes better and take it off when u are happy.
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Posted By: ammonia
Date Posted: February 12 2006 at 8:00pm
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read my other post if you wanna, its called blonde to brown disaster update pics.. here are my result pics.
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Posted By: pasdebourre
Date Posted: February 13 2006 at 5:55am
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Thanks for sharing your experience. Here is what the color consultant at Robert Craig emailed me. I'd actually asked her about toner after using the bleach/shampoo/conditioner combination to lighten the color a little bit. unfortunately the toner needs to be chosen after the lightening - this cannot be predicted until the result of lightening the hair is known and then the toner is chosen based on that - after all the peroxide dyes used and the remover I would allow a professional colorist to do this for you - bleaching hair is very stressful on hair that is almost certain to be internally damaged by peroxide and ammonia products making it grab color very fast and it can also easily go too dark again Basically she's saying the toner could go too dark, as I've damaged my hair via the permanent hair color and ColorFix, and I should trust this to a professional. But I've spent about $150 thus far (my colorist did a semi-perm color first, then did the permanent color five weeks later) and hate to spend more money on a colorist without knowing I'll like what I get. So I have to think about this some more. |
Posted By: ammonia
Date Posted: February 13 2006 at 10:51am
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i also hate spending money at the salone because your right, you dont know what your gonna get. thats why i do it myself so that way i can at least know i did it and you dont feel ripped off. ------------- |