ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HAIR DYE – NEVER DONE IT BEFORE…. HELP!!

1. Do a skin test before you try your chosen product on your hair (the accompanying leaflet should explain how).

2. Most brands offer temporary (6 washes), semi-permanent (24 washes) and permanent) dyes. When you have selected a brand try the temporary to see if you actually like the look.

3. I use Belle-Colour at the moment and I have used Clairol in the past. They both work and are not too vicious. I don’t know if you have these brands in US.

4. Check the colour chart on the side of the box to see what effect the colourant will have on your particular hair colour.

5. Follow the instructions carefully, especially with regard to the time you leave the product in. Don’t be tempted to leave it for an extra few minutes.

I dye my own hair quite often (keeps down the salon costs!) Please make sure to do the strand test first, especially if you havent tried that brand before. If you have sensitive skin, most boxes included a rubber glover or two for your hands so I would use that as well.

A couple of tips I have found out through trial (and much) error:

**MAKE SURE ALL OF YOUR HAIR IS COVERED IN DYE! It’s super easy to miss a section or two of hair so make sure you get all of the “underneath” hair, the hair behind and around your ears and the hairline itself.

**Wear an old t-shirt or a button down…that way if you do glop a little bit on yourself, you won’t be upset.

**Don’t dye two radical colors so close together. Example: I went from blonde to red in 8 weeks and I came out of it blonde/punk rocker pink! LOL luckily, it looked cute so I kept it 😉

**If you do want to dye your hair two different colors in less than 12 weeks, I would recommend a Malibu treatment first. This should be done at a salon.

**Buy a shampoo and conditioner that is for color-treated hair, especially if you wash your hair often. This will ensure your color stays around for awhile.

**If you have a question whether the color is too light or dark…check your eyebrows! You will get a good idea whether this is a good color for your skin tone and whether or not you look silly (black eyebrows and platinum blonde hair is probably not the best match lol).

**Clairol, Herbal Essence, L’Oreal are all good brands that I have tried.

**When you want just a little bit of color, try highlights. You can get a kit at the store for these as well and sometimes this is a better alternative. It’s fairly easy to do highlights, most kits come with a comb/brush type of instrument to help spread the dye into straight, even lines.

**If you have dark hair and want to go red, try a brighter red. The color might scare you on the box but trust me, by the time it sets into your hair, it won’t seem like the same color.

**If you have a dark hair and want blonde hair, don’t choose a platinum/bleach blonde color the first time. Slowly work your way through the different blonde colors (ash, golden, medium, possibly strawberry).

**If you have blonde hair, don’t go dark brunette immediately. Why? Your roots will SHOW WITH A VENGENCE within 3 weeks. Unless you are ready for the upkeep and want to stay brunette for a long time, do yourself a favor and ease your way into that color scheme 🙂

**If you have red hair…ay yi yi. Your hair will never be truly blonde because the red will show too much and you will have to dye your hair raven black in order to get it brunette to erase the auburn streaks.

Hope some of this made sense but it is what I have learned over the years (and a little from beauty school, before I dropped out ;))

if you have brassy hair (which is what I have) then try the ash tones. it depends on your natural hair. I have auburn/burnet for natural too and I have gotten a nice chestnut brown. My hair is slowly going grey so it looks like an auburn mouse… lol. might go to chestnut again. 🙂

Chey

just ask at the counter if they can tell you which is ash and which is the other kind. if you have auburn then ash is good, if you dont have auburn in your hair then I think you want to go for warm (reddish) tone for chestnut or any other colour. I can’t remember what the warm tone is called though.

Chey

AV, it’s not bad I promise! Don’t be scared! I remember dying my hair the first time and thinking “oh crap, what weird color will my hair be?” lol But it’s only hair and it’s only dye. It may not turn out how you pictured it but you may find that you like that color or it grows on you. I wash my hair daily and when I choose a brighter color it fades within a week so I know if I dont like it at first, I wont have to deal with it for a long time!

But definitely use PM’s advice about the temporary color the first time! If you like it, you can always switch to a semi or permanant dye 🙂

Oh, the joys of being a woman! I always think to myself when I’m coloring, plucking, waxing, shedding, pulling, pinching etc “Oh the hell girls put ourselves through to be gorgeous!” hehe

AV, if you want to just “cover the gray” and keep your natural shade I suggest using Clairol Natural Instincts semi-permanent dyes that wash out in 28 shampoos(or how ever many.) Semi-permanent dyes coat the hair instead of trying to infuse the dye into the hair strand the way permanent dyes do. I’ve convinced several of my friends to switch from permanent to semi-permanent dyes and the colors are richer and much more natural looking. They are also easier to correct. I wanted to lighten mine for the summer and it was easy to remove the dark brown and add blonde. (Wait till you have a little more experience and I’ll get into that.) I suggest if you are a medium chestnut that you first try light chestnut or light auburn. You can always go darker on top of lighter shades. Dye remover can get messy and speaking of that, be careful around wallpaper or towels etc. My bathroom is all tiled so I don’t have a problem but I sometimes clean up little splatters of dye afterward. A friend of mine got some dots on her bathroom wallpaper so just be careful. You can remove some dye splatters on surfaces with nail polish remover. To tone down brassiness I sometimes use light ash blonde all over my hair. I don’t seem to have to do this too often, but I am naturally brunette and blonde touch-ups can get brassy. Natural Instincts has a brass correcting treatment but I have never tried it or read the box to see what it is in it. If you start with a light chestnut and it looks too bright or doesn’t blend with the non-gray hair you may want to switch to a medium shade. I would give your new shade a week or two and then decide. Do NOT shampoo after applying semi-permanent dye, just a good thorough rinse. Wait at least 24 hours before you shampoo. Apply the dye to dry hair. I use gels and hair sprays and apply dye directly to my dry hair, you don’t have to wash your hair first. I also cover my face, ears, neck and wrists with cold cream in case of a splatter. Keep a damp dark-colored facecloth ready and a couple wet q-tips to remove splatters from skin immediately. After you have done this a few times you will get the hang of it and get a better idea of what shade is perfect for you. Then I will tell you about dyeing your eyebrows and eyelashes!

Little I can add here, but being me I will anyhow. I am a man as some of you know, and premature gray runs in my family. I also always wanted to be a redhead. So when those gray strands started showing up in my hair–in my twenties!!–I was working in a CVS so hair dye was easy to come by. It worked well enough for me. I had it done professionally one time. It looked great, but cost WAY too much. Another time my hair cutter did it for free as they were running a special. Again, fine, but didn’t last long enough. So nowadays I always do the “permanent” hair color. Which is of course only permanent until it grows out, but it still lasts longer than all others.

As others have said, read all instructions and follow them to the letter. Wear an old shirt and WATCH YOUR EYES. Can’t stress that one enough.

Also, when mixing the various liquids in the same bottle as most versions tell you to do, make sure they do blend smoothly. If it remains clumpy and unmixed, you have a bad batch; that happened to me once….I wound up a greenish-blonde.

Thanks KK Great idea!