Hi! I need some advice about hair color and products. Over the course of this year, I have dyed my hair black twice, bleached it twice, and now have dyed it red over 5 times.
I want to go from my faded burgundy color to a pale light/whitish blonde. My color fades quickly and after a month of shampooing, I could get most of it almost blonde again.
However, before I try anything I would like to know the best method from going red to a light ashy blonde! My hair is quite damaged from all the coloring and bleaching so maybe a recommendation on a hair care system would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! – Izzy
Izzy,
in addition to sharing my name, you also seem to share my passion for dramatic hair change-a-roos. I get it. Nothing can top that feeling of looking in the mirror and seeing a brand new version of you. I’ve literally made it my life’s work to share that wonderful feeling with the world. However, sadly, today’s hair tinting technology is only on par with wax wings. Flying too close to the sun can be a huge mistake. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Black and red are the absolute hardest colors to get out of hair. That pigment sticks. To attain white blonde you need to eliminate all pigment in the hair shaft and then tone it. Hair keratin naturally has a pale yellow tone so you can never get it white using bleach alone. To give you an idea of how hard this is, most natural deep brunettes and redheads can never attain platinum. They can bleach their hair until it dissolves, and they still won’t get those last orange pigment particles out. You have artificial tint in your hair, and that is even harder to get out. The fact that you’ve already bleached your hair twice makes going platinum a BAD idea.
I once saw a colleague try to do this exact thing on a client. His hair literally turned into goo when he tried to shampoo the bleach out. When I tried this tinting insanity on myself, I suppose I was lucky. My hair didn’t liquefy, it just dried so badly it crumbled in my hands. I had to cut it down to 3 inches. I was not happy.
My advice: abandon the blonde for now, and grow out all of the damage. This is a boring pain in the butt, but it’s necessary. Once you have a new batch of virgin hair, start with blonde, and work your way darker from there. My general routine is platinum blonde, pastel blonde, bright colors, bright red, auburn, dark brown, and lastly black. When I’m done with the black, it’s time to grow it all out, and fix my foundation again. If you want to do the crime, you gotta be prepared to do the boring, boring time.
Sadly, I know that when the hair color fever hits, sometimes rationality goes out the window. If you insist on trying this (which I strongly recommend you don’t) try using Color Oops Hair Color Remover. It can eliminate a lot of artificial pigment without bleach. It’s still damaging, but not as damaging as bleach. Then you will need to follow a very strict conditioning routine. You can check out my suggestions on how to most effectively do that here.
