Not sure where to put this, but thinking it’s dealing mostly with opinions, I’m sticking it here.
DesertRoomie and I have our Halloween costumes. I’m going as Jack Skellington and she as Sally. The dress looks good and the glovettes will save putting greasepaint on her arms, but the wig looks rather like yarn – more suitable for Raggedy Ann than Sally’s flowing tresses. DR has long, straight hair, but it’s blonde, not red. It’s her pride and joy; hasn’t been cut in thirty years, no curling, no anything except washing and conditioning it every other other day or so. She’s willing to try a temporary dye but is kind of leery about it.
How likely is it to damage her hair? How temporary is temporary? She doesn’t want to be left with pink hair.
Temporary dyes are generally not “temporary” as in completely washing out the next day. There’s a brand called Fanci-Full that touts itself as temporary. The color washes out in about a week. You’d think the more you’d shampoo, the faster the color will fade. The only issue with that is that shampooing that vigorously for that short amount of time will not be kind to your hair.
Red/pink/purple dye tend to fade fast, but from what I’ve seen, they can react horribly with your natural hair color. About 10-15 years ago I went through a “I want red hair” period and bought an auburn Nice 'n Easy, thinking it’d wash out in a week. No sweat, right? I ended up with Irish Setter red hair that didn’t completely wash out until 2 months later.
My $.02? I’d suggest to DesertRoomie to wither invest in another wig or somehow make her natural hair fit the costume…if that’s possible.
Red dyes, even temporary ones, are terrible about leaving color residue behind, especially in light hair. She might try doing a strand test on hair harvested from her comb, but I’d be willing to bet if she uses a temporary dye she’s going to have color left over for months, if not years, and if her hair is as long and lovely as you say, she probably doesn’t want to mess with the color of it. 30 years since a haircut? I’m envious…how long is it?
I’d go with either a wig, or perhaps fashion a long snood out of a piece of sheer red fabric. Sally’s hair kind of moved in one big clump in the movie, right?
I came in here to say that I use temporary dyes all the time, that I love them, but I have dark brown hair - virtually no risk for me (except purple dye, for some reason - it looves my hair, and practically had to be cut off). I also think red will leave a pink residue on blonde hair. I did a bunch of blonde chunks on my dark hair, and then dyed it all dark red - the blonde took the red dye like it’s on fire, and it is lingering (and turning pink).
There are some really great wigs available online- I suggest taking a look online.
As everyone said, temporary dyes are never temporary. I put a temporary dye (bright red) onto my VERY dark brown hair. The red was kick ass and bright red, but a month later when I went into my hair dresser to get the whole shebang (black and red) changed, it took two liftings and a bleaching to get the red mostly out of my hair. Like, even after all that bleaching, then a coat of brown dye, my hair still had a very red tint to it.
What I would suggest are those little spray cans they sell of color. Those things are actually pretty cool. Just get the colors she wants, spray it in, then brush (otherwise it will be stiff like hair spray). A little color will flake out when you brush, but not too bad. This is a picture of me a few years ago with some of the sprayed blue on my hair- you can see the color is great and my hair doesn’t look crunchy at all. Oh, ignore my friend- his hair is blue with “temporary” blue dye and he’s lame. In case you’re wondering, we coach high school debate and promised the kids that if they made it to state, we’d dye our hair blue for the tournament.
Does Fanci-Full temporarily lighten hair? I need medium-to-dark blonde hair for my Halloween costume, and I’m looking for something to use on my light brown hair (costume store wigs are too small to fit my head). My back-up plan is to try B-blonde Temporary Highlight Spray.
The proverbial down to her butt. Most of the time she wears it in a single braid that winds up at about the small of her back but for special occasions it’s just loose down her back.
If light brown hair is lightened to blonde, it will involve peroxide (bleaching), and it will be permanent. A blonde rinse for darker hair that doesn’t involve peroxide - I don’t see this working very well, but the literature on it says it does. Maybe you could try the rinse and report back (they don’t look very expensive).
It looks like the Temporary Highlight Spray is just a spray-on colour - I think that could work.
I know we’ve had this question before but I’m forgetting…it must just stop growing, or fall out at a certain length. 30 years would be 180 inches, or 15 feet. But in reality it’s maybe four feet long. What happens to it?!?
My thoughts exactly. I don’t see how a mousse or color rinse can lighten hair, but the mousse supposedly works. (shrug) I may just go with the spray-on color, since I need to keep my hair in a braid anyway.
At some point your hair reaches terminal length, beyond which it won’t grow anymore; I think for most people each individual hair will grow for something like six years, after which it sheds and a new hair starts growing in its place. And a lot depends on how you take care of it, too. I was never able to grow my hair any longer than just above the small of my back, and the ends were always all raggedy, and then one day I realized that every time I sat back in a chair I was grinding my hair between the chair and my back and breaking it off. Since I’ve started wearing it up most of the time, and pulling it over my shoulder to sit down if I have it down (plus using gentler products on it), I’ve managed to grow it down past my tailbone.
DR’s hair grows very slowly. About every six months or so she’ll trim about a half-inch off to keep the split ends down. Like you, Marlitharn, she discovered that if she keeps it in a braid most of the time, it stays in better shape. It also makes it easier to flip over shoulder or behind the back of a chair.
Kind of depends on what blonde you are, but either way, you will be dark for a long time. My hair used to be borderline dark blonde/light brown and since I dyed it black, I’ve let it fade out but it’s still a lot darker than it used to be. I’ve dyed it several other times since then and stripped it out etc. but the new hair growth is still dark. My good friend Heather started off as a platinum blonde. A few rounds with several coloured dyes, ranging from red to brown and back again, she will remain a mousy-brown-red head.
My first reaction to this is DON’T. That’s just my prejudice, though - I don’t think it looks good when people go that far away from their native colour. Black doesn’t look good on most people who weren’t born with it; I’d say go with dark brown if you have to go that dark.
