Mockdockers – I need your professional opinions.
I just tried a hair coloring product – Loreal’s Excellence 10 minute thingy to be almost exact. If you’ve seen pictures of me, which you may have if you’ve been around here awhile, you may know that my hair is sort of a dark blonde color. And you may recall that I’ve been a loyal Sun-In fan for some time. But it has stopped working for me. My hair has developed some sort of freaky immunity to Sun-In. So my mom suggested this Loreal product. In the lightest blonde color.
I had never used one of these DIY color thingies before IN MY LIFE. But I read the instructions super carefully and wore the gloves and saturated my hair with the goo and even put on a kitchen timer for 12 minutes just to be extra sure it would work. And then I did just like the package said and lathered it up with warm water and rinsed it out and conditioned. And you know what happened?
I LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME.
I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that my roots might be slightly closer to the color of the rest of my hair now, but the difference is truly negligible. If anything, my hair is a little darker now.
So I need to know, from those of you experienced with hair color, what you might use to Actually Lighten your hair without going too drastic. Because Loreal Excellence 10-minute thingy did nothing but expose me to chemicals unnecessarily.
Advice please!
I have friends who LOVE dying hair. They dyed mine red the other day, just because they could.
We used Revlon. It cost $3, and it worked pretty well. My hair got a smidge lighter, but as we were going for ginger I didn’t need to be much more than that. Honestly, though, $3 is cheap enough that it’s worth a shot.
Also, when we dyed my hair we left it in for 25 minutes. Of course, this being a different color/product, the instructions were different. Plus, you aren’t supposed to wash your hair for 24 hours before and 24 hours after you dye it (you do rinse it, obviously).
You might try Garnier Nutrisse also, apparently it’s amazing.
I’m an old pro at homedone haircolor. Started on Sun In when I was about 13. By the way, even mentioning Sun In around a hairstylist will send him/her into a panic attack.
Anyway, these days I turn my dark dishwater hair (haven’t actually seen the real color in a very long time) into acceptable medium golden blonde with either Nice & Easy light golden blonde or Garnier Nutrisse medium golden blonde. Both give about the same result & have never gone too light on me even though I push the processing time limit on them regularly. Some years ago I found that this isn’t true with Nice & Easy light blonde shades. I look back at old pictures & see hair about the color & texture of Susanne Somers’ in Three’s Company.
One of my college roommates tried to bleach her own roots to match the rest of what her back-home sytlist had done. She ended up looking like she slathered her head in egg yolks. Not pretty. The “emergency stylist” she found helped her understand that it was worth it to spend her money on a professional bleach job instead of beer. So she was blonde and cute enough to get guys to buy her drinks.
The moral: Have Mr. Mock buy you a beer while your stylist does your roots.
Have to agree with R there. As a diehard dye-er myself, I finally reached the conclusion that no matter what I did, it always looked amateurish. Also, sometimes our hair becomes resistant to the home stuff as more and more white hairs grow in. NOT SAYING THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENED TO YOU OF COURSE!!!
Go for the good stuff – you’re so worth it!!
I finally gave up with the sun-in and just went brunette.
If you have a Sally’s beauty supply in your area, you could ask someone there. I have a friend who did that and she got good advice. Since your hair isn’t very dark naturally, you should be able to find something that would work…you might not have gotten a light enough hair color. And there is a difference in hair color (however light it looks on the box ) and actual bleach. Hair color can turn brassy over time.
Try vodka with lemon juice.
And while you’re drinking it, you …
heh. Just kidding — although I do remember people trying vodka and lemon juice on their hair when I was in college.
Did you do a test first to see how long you needed to leave it? It may not have been long enough.
You might also want to try some of the more natural hair dyes. Health foods stores sometimes carry them. There’s a couple of brands … NatureTint is one: http://www.naturalhairdye.com/color/naturtint/naturtintp/index.html
My mom uses it. In her youth, she was a redhead (no lie, she looked a lot like Maureen O’Hara) but now it’s lightened to a very pale blonde, which she dyes to golden blonde (7M). Lyonella mentioned the *cough* grays *cough* and according to my mom they do need more time to “take” the color. Not that you’ve got any.
Going lighter is very hard. When you go to a salon, they bleach out the hair that you want colored (in this case, your roots) and THEN add the blonde dye to color it. Think about paint–if you try to go to a lighter color, you need to add white. I’ve been coloring my hair and use the clairol root touch up, but i go from brunette to red, so it’s easily done at home. I think, to be done well, blonde really needs to be done at a salon.
You cannot lighten in 10 minutes. Us brunettes have a far easier task with fun with hair color. I suggest you find a a reasonably priced professional who can help you with highlights in summer and lowlights through the winter. Someone with enough experience so their work looks like a God given gift to you. Find someone whose hair is awesome and ask who does it.
I use Rit (in the laundry department). The only problem is, you have to get the water boiling (that you dissolve the Rit in), and then that sorta, but … Oh, never mind.
I agree with some of the previous posters… Go to a salon. It’s so worth it. They are trained on how/what needs to be done to combat whatever issues you’re having.
Also, if your hair really is being difficult… It’s their problem to figure it out, not yours.
Um, yeah. I’ve seen your purse and shoe collection and know what you drive. Have Mr. Mock spring for the professional coloring, girl. I’m just sayin…:-)
Unfortunately, I have BGH (“Black Girl Hair”) so any at-home advice I give you probably would not work on your blonde tresses. But I will say that the JC Penney salon at the mall here actually does really good chemical processing at low prices, so my friends & I have been going there lately. I can’t tell a difference in anything other than the ambiance and the cost. Otherwise, my hair looks the same. Ours takes walk-in clients, so it might be worth it to talk to them.
I vote for going to Sally to buy the professional stuff. I haven’t seen my natural hair color in 20 years.
The trick is to pick the “lift” or strength of the peroxide solution. 20% is the minimum and it goes up from there. Sally also has additives to help pesky grey absorb the color better. As our hair loses pigment, it also becomes less porous and doesn’t absorb the color as well. I am bottle auburn, so what I do is pick about 3 shades of red and add 1 oz of each. This makes it look less “done”.
I set aside about an hour a month for hair maintenance. I mix the stuff in the bathroom, then apply and put a plastic grocery bag over my head. The grocery bag is for two reasons, your body heat will help process the color and it keeps you from getting color all over the place.
Good luck!
WAIT – WHAT – you own a KITCHEN timer
Well, clearly I had to have Mr. Mock identify it as such before I used it.
Mock, you may have copper undertones which prevents the blonde from soaking in. I sure do and to achieve blonde I have to use an ash blonde which is actually a variant of green to cancel out the red in my hair. I don’t go blond anymore, I’m one of those Kate Walsh auburns but that is what I had to do.
Also, I LOVE my box dye. I am OCD about it and I don’t get dye on myself so for me it is a win over salons. I use the Nice n’ Easy medium auburn because it isn’t a freakish maroon auburn. I leave it in for an extended period of time because I have longer hair but it hasn’t fried my hair yet. If I don’t dye, it also grows out very nicely.
But if you can afford a professional, salons are great.