I’ve been coloring my own hair for YEARS. I won’t tell you how many. 🙂 Over the years, I’ve experienced a few bad dye jobs, but not very many. I’ve mostly had good experiences.
I cut my hair very short recently. I have 2 reasons why I did this. #1. I live in Texas. Explanation enough? It’s 102 degrees here today. #2. I had not colored my hair in MONTHS and I thought this would be a good way to transition into going natural.
After several weeks of having it short, I became frustrated with the color. Right in front, I left my hair a little longer for bangs. In that area, I still had some of the “color” left from when I had been coloring it. And some of the white had sort of a yellowish look to it. So I had tri-colored hair!
I had tried the rinse in-rinse out temporary colors, but they do not have enough pigment to cover what I wanted to cover.
I went online and did some research on temporary hair color. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that a DEMI-permanent hair color would be the way to go. The Demi-Permanent is supposed to wash our gradually in 4 to 6 weeks.
I went to the local Beauty Supply Store and after some help from the sales girl there, I chose a pretty chocolate brown color. I felt good about my decision and left the store with a smile on my face.
The next day, Sunday afternoon, I decided it was time to color my hair. I had all my chores done for the weekend and didn’t have any other distractions to worry about. I read the directions carefully, again and proceeded.
After getting all the goop in my hair, I had to wait between 20 to 40 minutes “for the color to fully develop”. I set my kitchen timer for 20 minutes.
I looked at my head in the mirror a couple of times during that 20 minutes and thought “gee this stuff looks pretty dark!”. But I wasn’t really alarmed. I’ve colored my hair enough to know that the goop on your head is not necessarily the color you will get in the end.
When my kitchen timer went off I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. The box says to rinse until the water runs clear. So sometimes this takes a while. Afterward, I carefully used a bunch of conditioner on my hair, knowing that coloring it is hard on my hair. Then rinsed and rinsed.
After the waterboarding at the kitchen sink, I went back to the bathroom toweling my hair as I went. Looking in the mirror, my hair was BLACK! I mean Jet Black!
I know that when your hair is wet, it usually looks darker. So I tried not to panic. I thought I would reserve judgement until after it had dried. So I toweled and checked, toweled and checked. It didn’t get any better.
I went back to the kitchen sink for more waterboarding. I washed my hair 3 or 4 more times. The rinse water showed some color coming off, but in the mirror, it still looked black.
It was time to go online again to see if I could find a remedy. I won’t bore you with the details, but I tried lemon juice, baking soda, peroxide, and vinegar. I washed and washed and washed my poor hair.
I don’t know how many times I actually washed my hair. I’m guessing 15 or so times. I felt like a waterboarded drowned rat!
The next morning, Monday, my hair still looked Very dark. I told you , it’s 102 degrees here today. So it’s the wrong time of year to wear a stocking cap. I couldn’t call in sick. What would I say? “Boss, I’m having a bad hair day?” I don’t think so. I had no choice but to just hold my head up, bite the bullet and go to work.
Men are funny about this kind of thing. Usually they will say NOTHING, if the result is a bad one. IF the result is good, they MIGHT say something.
The office staff was SILENT about my hair color. So I knew it was bad….
One brave soul said something like “so did you color your hair a little dark or something?”
Monday night I washed my hair 2 more times and used Lots of conditioner. My scalp was actually getting sore from the abuse I was putting it through!
Tuesday, on my lunch break, I bought one of those, “OOPS remove your hair color mistake” kits from the drug store. AND I bought a box of what I knew was a brown hair color that I had used before.
When I got home that night, I was putting the color remover and hair color in the bathroom. I looked in the mirror at my brown/black hair. I looked down at the 2 boxes I had just placed on the counter.
I’m scared to try anything more with my hair right now. So I think I’m just going to leave it alone. It’s not like the color is green or anything. If I keep abusing my hair, I’m afraid it might all just fall out!
This DEMI-Permanent hair color is SUPPOSED to fade out and bring me back to my natural color in 4 to 6 weeks. But after washing my hair a million times already, I hold out little hope for that to actually happen.
Do any of you have any home remedies for a bad hair dye job?
