trying to dye my hair red
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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=54718
Printed Date: August 13 2025 at 5:10am
Topic: trying to dye my hair red
Posted By: Hula Girl
Subject: trying to dye my hair red
Date Posted: July 16 2007 at 5:03pm
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I have naturally brown hair and want to dye it red however its proving to be easier said than done. For the past year, I have gone to the salon (2X) and used drugstore brands and my hair never seems to come out as red as I want it. I know that red is one of the hardest colors to keep fresh but I'm lucky if I get intense red under tones in the sun! I know the obvious solution would be to lighten my hair first so the red will take better but I don't want to damage my hair in the process. Is there a "safe" lightening product that I can use at home that won't fry or damage my hair? Any tips or suggestions on how to safely go from brown to blazing red?
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Replies:
Posted By: Susan W
Date Posted: July 18 2007 at 9:46am
This is a little bit difficult, I'll explain why. I think you will need to get your natural hair a little bit orange, then dye it red, like you said. Lightening hair is damaging, there's not really a way around that. All the methods to lighten it will need to remove pigment. If you go for lightening it to a dark orange, then go red, it might be blazing enough that you like it, but definitely don't lighten it past light orange (which will come out lighter red after you dye it...depends what you mean you want by blazing red). I'd really suggest you test strand everything on a hidden swatch of hair so you don't do anything to your whole head that won't be what you want.
The hard part about red is that it slides out of hair super easy, especiallky when you condition your hair, so even after you get it red, you will have trouble keeping it red. (It has the smallest molecules of all the colors, and they will slide out of regular hair, and they will slide out faster of porous hair that has been lightened, even if you use a permanent red dye). This is why its going to be a bit complicated. Its certainly doable, but you may have to do a lot of upkeep to keep it red. Once you get it orange though, even if your red dye fades, you can use things such as color-deposit shampoo (not the clear ones they sell at the drugstore, the ones that look like paint in the bottle that you get at the beauty supply shop....they make a couple of shades of red and those will show up on orange hair (they would not show up much on your current brown hair).
Again, lightening will be damaging, so make sure you really want to do this before you dive in. (You call yourself Hula Girl, so I'm picturing someone with lovely long dark hair, and if that's you, I can imagine why you don't want to mess it up!) I don't know if you are located in the US, but if so, you can get hair bleach at the beauty supply shops like Sally. Test strand to make sure you don't bleach more than you have to!
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Posted By: Hula Girl
Date Posted: July 18 2007 at 3:26pm
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Thank you for the advise. It sure does sound like a lot of up keep! Especially when you take into consideration when my roots grow out. Trying to match the shade that's already on my hair will probably be tricky.
One of the times that I went to the salon to have it dyed, they used a bleach "c*cktail" and my hair did resemble a dark orange color but I also recall how my hair wasn't quite as flaxin and shiney right after they the rinsed the c*cktail out. Then a friend told me that she also had a bleach "c*cktail" done and it damaged her hair. I guess if the only way to get blazing red is to bleach then I'll have to live without. It's just too big of a risk to take when you have long hair.
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Posted By: Susan W
Date Posted: July 19 2007 at 9:23am
Yeah, I know the feeling. I like to keep my hair long too, and would like it to be past my waist. I wish I could play with color more like I did when I was younger, but its so damaging over time if you do lots of different jobs on it, I had to make a choice which I wanted more.
It does depend how long you're talking though. If you want your hair to be bra strap length, and if your hair is medium or coarse (instead of fine), you can probably get away with a good bit of chemicals, you just may not be able to grow it much longer than that because you'll have to keep the splits trimmed. If you want it waist length, that's when it starts to get harder to use chemicals on it because the end hair is that extra year older than the rest of it. Red is one of the trickiest colors for longhairs too, since it has to be refreshed a lot....one thing some people do for long hair is use deposit only color, which is less damaging. I'm not familiar enough with it to know how long that type of color lasts though, especially on lightened hair. I always just did permenant on me. It might be something you could look into though. If you only had to bleach it to orange, then keep doing deposit only reds on it, it may not be that damaging if you were careful enough not to overbleach more than you needed the first time and you kept your hair bra strap length.
Yes, to do your roots, you'd have to bleach them to the same orangy shade, then dye them red to match your hair. Its doable, but harder than if you only did one chemical process instead of two.
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Making metal barettes/concord clips hair safe, long hair style how to: http://alonghair.wordpress.com
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