Luckily, it is not a “cannot show my face in public” style disaster. It just came out too dark. I was once called an “ageing Goth” in my mid twenties. I’m hitting 33 tomorrow and this very dark hair really doesn’t suit me anymore.
Details:
I wanted dark brown, but it turned out nearly black. It’s a permanent dye. Oops.
I tried to dye it over with a lighter tint. Managed some slightly browner glints, but it is still too dark.
I don’t really want to strip the whole thing with a bleach and start again. Too scary to attempt at home, plus I think my hair is fried enough now.
Sadly don’t have the money or time to get a stylist to sort this out.
On the good side, as I said, it’s not urgent as it isn’t horrendous. Just wondering if there is anything I could do to help lighten it out a little, to speed up the natural fade-out process. Is there anything that does the reverse of a “colour-safe” shampoo?
Did you just do it today? Try shampooing it. I think if it’s fresh shampoo will take some of the color out. (that’s why you’re supposed to wait a day or two to wash your hair after you color it.)
What TheChileanBlob said - lots of shampoo, and keep washing it often. Even permanent hair dye will fade (a bit) if you shampoo it often enough. You could possibly try putting lemon juice in your hair and sit in the sun for a bit, but I don’t know whether that would work on dyed hair - or how much. Worst case, take the opportunity to dress in black and write dark poetry.
I did that once, and the hairdresser who tried to fix it told me that very dark/black hair dye is the longest-lasting and hardest to shift. She put a red dye over it - doesn’t lighten it, but does warm it up.
Apparently anti-dandruff shampoos are pretty good at stripping hair dye, if you don’t want to add more dye.
This is excellent advice. If you can find it, old-fashioned Prell shampoo is good for this, too. You can take the paint off a building with Prell.
Just stand in the shower and later-rinse-repeat over and over, like the quote says, 16-20 times. It WILL lighten the color. Even if it’s more than 24 hours since the color job, try this anyway.
It really doesn’t. Mine (dyed dark brown these days) always fades to some strange, greenish-yellowish-amberish brown. I can’t even describe it, but I’m sure everyone who dyes their hair dark brown knows the colour I’m talking about. I keep my hair fairly short these days, so I just basically dye the whole shebang again.
OP, if you think the dark brown dye takes a long time to fade, never try a dark purple - I had to cut that shit off.
This happened to me once. I have brown hair, had blonde roots growing out and went to the wrong place. It was Elvira black. I also got the wash with detergent advice. it didn’t work.
A week later, I went to a good salon, and she highlighted it blonde, it came out perfect and it wasn’t fried.
Most home dyes will fade quicker than most people want them to, so a few days with frequent shampooing might even things out enough that you don’t hate it.
When your roots start coming in, you might dye them light brown and selectively use a dark brown touch-up kit to put in a few lowlights so you don’t have that line of demarcation. With some patience, it’s entirely possible to do this yourself at home.
You’re young, but just in case you’re coloring to cover premature gray, the grays will fade out quicker and give you more variety of tone. Happy birthday, by the way!
I wouldn’t turn to lemon juice. Best case is you end up with electric orange patches; worse case, it “fries” her hair even more.
When this happened to me (from a professional colorist who must have grabbed the wrong bottle, I don’t care what she says!) I tried some at home stuff but nothing worked. Finally I went to a (different!) colorist who was able to correct it and undo the “friedness” as well.
The tip on using anti-dandruff shampoo worked like a champ! I accidentally left Just for Men on way too long and my whiskers came out black, not just dark like normal. I left the anti-dandruff shampoo (Selsun Blue original) on my whiskers for a few minutes. When I rinsed, the shade was knocked down just enough to make it look pretty normal for me.
This is a lesson I learned after doing the same thing. My hair is naturally dark brown so when I started dying it because of grays, I naturally chose “dark brown” dye. BIG MISTAKE. It came out black - I looked like a black-capped chickadee!! I bought a product called “Ooops” (I think) but after reading the directions, I said forget it. I would have had to stand in the shower for 2 hours! I tried putting dark blonde dye on top of it instead. That didn’t do much. So I lived with it. So the next time around I bought “medium brown” - that was too dark too. Never again. I now use “light brown” dye. But everytime I pick it up, I pause and look at the hair color of the girl on the box and think, “that is way too light”. Then I think back to the earlier dye jobs and I come back to my senses. My hair stylist told me that when you’re choosing a color always go at least one color lighter than you THINK you should use.
My friendly neighborhood cosmo likens Prell to paint remover and has recommended people use that or Dawn dishwashing liquid to help get rid of goofed DIY color. After either one, condition like mad.
