Hair Dyeing Mishap - Fix Too Dangerous?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was foolish. I thought I could bleach my own hair. I was wrong.

Now I have hair the color of apricots. It looks freaking ridiculous. Or, as my poet roommate says: ‘It looks like a sunset!’ Oh, the joys of living with Pollyanna…

Anyways, needing to get it back to some semblance of normal, I’ve purchased some plain brown dye (which is reasonably close to my natural color) and intended to fix the damage this evening. Of course, the package says to wait 2 weeks (!!!) to dye after bleaching. Is this really necessary? Will all my hair fall out or break off if I try and dye it tonight?

Any info from people with experience with this sort of thing would be much appreciated.

Before ayone suggests it, professional dyeing is not an option. I live in an overpriced New England city, and am pretty darn poor. (The two packages of hair dye required to create and fix this problem ran me about $17, a professional job would cost about $30-50.)

My other thought was to shave it all off and start over… but I’m supposed to be a bridesmaid in April…

In conclusion: WAHHHHHH!!! I’m such a TOOL!! I have anime hair!!! ::whimper::

2

Step away from the hair dye!

Really, don’t go there. Assuming you really, really bleached it (that is, you pulled color out, not just deposited a color you don’t like) you’ve damaged your hair already. You could do a strand test with the brown and see what happens, but for the love of Og, don’t do your whole head.

Cut off a small hunk of your hair, all the way at the roots. Mix one Tablespoon from the color and one Tablespoon the the developer from your box. Use a plastic or glass bowl and a plastic spoon. Use this to dye the strand. Leave it on for 30 minutes (or whatever the box says) and then rinse. See what you’ve got.

If the strand test comes out OK, then go for it. If it comes out fried, you have to either wait, go to a professional or enjoy your short 'do in April.

3

I have done the same damn thing several times. Take a deep breath, relax. Okay, here are a few options:

  1. Use the permanent dye and cthen condition the heck out of your hair as often as you can. Before bedtime, condition with olive oil, wrap your head in plastic (not the face–breathing is good), and wash in the morning. Regardless, your hair will feel like wiry dog fur for about a week. Oh yeah–does the brown dye have a reddish undertone? If so, you might end up auburn, due to your current shade. I’d suggest an ash brown rather than anything golden.

  2. Exchange the permanent dye for semi-permanent which is less damaging, but also lasts less time. In my drugstore I can buy little bottles of temporary wash-in color for $4, and a bottle lasts me a while (I’ll use it once a week, or once every two weeks).

  3. If you’d like to try blond, you might be able to tone it. Again, toner is something I’m able to buy in the drugstore here in NYC. Not sure if it’s available in your neck of the woods. It’ll be blue or violet-based. Either one is fine. You can also go to a hairdresser and ask how much they charge for toner. Usually, it’s a whole lot less than getting your hair dyed.

Good luck! Sally Beauty Supply will have any of the stuff I’ve mentioned, and they’re pretty inexpensive. I’m sure many other Dopers will come commiserate and offer some fantastic ideas soon.

4

Well, this is just my own personal experience - YMMV.

I once had dyed my hair with permanent colour - black. Well, after a couple of months, I got really tired of the black hair, especially since my skin is so pale I looked like Morticia. Okay. I wanted red hair.

First I had to remove all the black, and so I bought some bleach - Blondissima, I think. I left it on too long. Too, too long.

The top of my head was pure white, turning into a snowy blond most of the way down, until it got to the tips, which it didn’t touch at all - they were still black. Oh well, said I. I’ll just pour the bottle of red dye on top of the whole thing and it will even out. (I was like, 17 at the time! Still in my “duh” years!)

Yeeeahh. Riiiight. My hair was: white on the top, turning to a bright yellow, to a bright, bright orange, to black on the tips. It looked like my hair was on fire, and the tips were burnt.

I wore a hat and went sheepishly home to my mother, and upon seeing this disaster, we made an emergency Sunday-night trip to the family hair stylist.

She gave me a package of Inufusium leave-in treatment, which I was to use that night when I got home, and then she told my mother to go to the drug store the next day and get me a bottle of ammonia-free dye, close to my natural colour. The next day, I dyed my hair, and it all looked at least semi-normal: there was still a reddish stripe on the top of my head, but it wasn’t terrible. My co-workers teased me forever afterward, calling me “Stripe” - but only after they heard the whole story behind it. If it weren’t for that, they wouldn’t have said much about it.

Check with your hairdresser - but I had no problem whatsoever. I dye my hair every two months or so, and have since before that weird incident, and my hair is still shiny, thick and full, healthy, soft, and tangle-free. Not dry or brittle or anything.

Of course, my hairdresser told me I was very, very lucky I didn’t kill my hair that night. shrugs Live on the edge, I say.

5

That’s Infusium .

6

I know you said you can’t afford a professional treatment, but if there’s any way possible, please go to a salon. They could really help you, and from the sounds of it, you’re about to make it worse.

7

What about going to a beauty-school? They could use you as a teaching tool and it would probably be really cheap, plus the instructors would do it, so you’d get a good job.

Good luck …

(My hair went green once after a bad home-dye-job so I feel for you …).

S.

8

Anastasaeon, Chicken Scratch, WhyNot: Thanks for the advice. I have now replaced the permanent dye with gentle, no ammonia dye in an ashy shade, and will DEFINITELY do a strand test before I dump it on my head. I’m actually not too worried about it frying my hair, my hair is quite oily naturally. it’s halfway through the day my hair is feeling as greasy as it usually does on a day I haven’t washed it, even with the bleach I dumped on it last night (Feria’s bleach blonding kit was what I used). But that is another thing for the strand test to ascertain.

Indygrrl: I do appreciate your concern, and if the strand test tonight looks questionable, I will go to a beauty shop tomorrow.

This has done me in for coloring my hair. When it was short and I was in college, a mishap like this would have just been funny. But seeing as how I’m supposed to be an adult, no more of this russian roullette with the hair dye. (At least until I acquire a larger collection of hats.)

9

Right there with you - as a teenager, I had an unfortunate tangle with Sun-In (the Sun-In won) that turned my hair a shade of orange that doesn’t exist in nature. A dip in the pool later, it was ungodly orange with green highlights.

10

Nooooooooo. Having gone to beauty school for a bit, I can tell you that those students don’t know what they’re doing and they use the cheapest, worst supplies that they can find. I wouldn’t let them trim my dog’s hair, let alone dye mine.

11

I once paid good money for a similar hair do. Except it was copper at the roots going to black at the tips.

12

Hey, I would have just left it, if it didn’t go against my work’s “colour” policy. :smiley:

(we could only wear blue clothes, preferably our actual uniforms, and no “distracting” colours for hair, clothes, etc - to prevent forklift accidents - what-eva!)

13

Well, just as a matter of interest, had you put a SECOND box of the Feria on your mellon, you hair would have wound up a very light blond. Generally, when you wind up with orange either a) you didn’t leave the bleach on long enough or b) your hair was too dark/dense with pigment to fully lighten with only one application.

However, the amonia free ash sounds ok. It should tone down the appricot nicely.

You may get a greenish cast from the ash - if so, for your next application (you’ll have to keep toning your hair until it grows out) you may want to consider a plain “blond” - not golden blond or ash blond, just “blond”. It’s the most nutral of the shades.

Good luck.

Alice - queen of the botched home dye jobs…

14

And doesn’t that sound like someone you should be taking advice from? :smiley:

15

No advice here - just thought I’d chime in with my own home dye job stories. Latest - I highlighted my dark brown hair. I went overboard with the streaking, so once again I have mostly orange hair. Looking at it, it occurred to me that I did exactly the same thing last time. What do I have to do - put a permanent note to myself on my mirror saying, “Do not streak too much hair”?

I have a bottle of semi-permanent red at home that’s calling my name. After my husband’s Christmas party this weekend, I think I will indulge it. My hair is nice and short now, so I have no worries (famous last words, I know.)

16

Just let me clarify … I thought that perhaps a beauty school would be a win-win for everyone … of course I didn’t expect the STUDENTS would do the work, but that an instructor would take over and also use it as a teaching situation.

I didn’t realize they use cheap products. Sorry. :frowning:

17

My advice is go to a good salon (NOT a beauty school - think Grease), even if you have to eat mac & cheese for the next month to fund it.

I once managed to dye my hair so the top half was orange and the bottom half was black. Since I wasn’t going for a kitschy Halloween look, I spent a day at the salon and unbelievably I looked completely normal afterward.

Don’t know quite where you are, but if you are near Ridgefield, CT, go to Adam Broderick Image Group. They are the ones who saved me.

18

I did the same thing, lightened my pretty-much black hair to apricot in an attempt to get back to my natural color (which is impossible to find in a box.)

My roots were platinum, the rest was orange, and it was mid-back length.

All was well, though. I worked at Sally Beauty Supply for a few years, so I helped many a panicked woman fix a goof up with hair color.

This is what you need: (from Sally or another beauty supply store)
-haircolor in a shade that closely matches your natural color. The apricot will leave a lot of red in your hair regardless, and it’s almost impossible to get rid of, so find the color closest to natural with a GREEN base. One bottle for up to medium length hair, two for any longer.
-one little tubey or “Red-gold corrector” to add to the dye.
-one bottle of 20 volume creme developer. 30 and 40 volume take too much color out, further bleaching your hair, and could make it end up gummy. 20 volume is the best way to go, enough peroxide to make the color stick. the store bought dye kits tend to come with 30 volume developer.
-mix color and developer in equal portions.
-a little tubey of a scalp protectant can’t hurt. A clerk should be able to help you find it, it should be right next to the corrector tubeys.
-as much “Lamaur Bone Marrow” conditioner as you can afford. This stuff is a lifesaver for overprocessed hair. Caution: it will make the floor of your shower slippery.

Here - I’ll show you my hair.
This is where I came from and this is where I am, at nearly natural. My hair is still soft and easily combed, too. It doesn’t have to be a disaster.

19

I have very short dark hair. I used to always bleach it myself the lightest I could get it and then either leave it like that, or if I wanted to color it, re-dye it with the color that same night. I’ve never had any problems, but maybe that’s cause it’s really short. I wouldn’t recommend you to do that, but it works perfectly fine for me.

20

My hair is naturally oily as well, and it’s short. I can brutally bleach it and then dye it on the same day and it bounces back without any visible harm. IF your hair is short, you may well be able to do the same.

If your hair is long, I’d be leery of dyeing it again so soon. Short hair is far more forgiving - long hair can end up splitting and breaking like crazy if you don’t treat it kindly. (Incidentally, why I got mine cut short.)

Any chance you could be happy with ‘sunset’ hair? I know I’d love to swap places with you - I deliberately get my hairdresser to paint random splotches of bleach on my hair with the intent of them going various shades of apricot to white. I like the tortiseshell effect it gives to my naturally mousy brown hair. :wink: