Removing semi dye from grey hair

[Loviatar]

Hi all,

My mom, who has the 2a/b f ii hairtype at BSL, is thinking of letting her grey grow out over the next few years. She is 62.

Currently she colours her hair with Schwarzkopf Country Colors tone-on-tone semi-permanent colorant in Dark Blonde. This dyes her greys a deep honey colour but matches her natural light brown. It works very well and the greys just look like golden sparklies.

She doesnt want to stop dyeing and grow out, though, as she doesnt like the two tone effect. Is something like ColorFix or Colour Oops going to be a good option for her? Or is she better (as she assumes) going to a salon and explaining that she wants the colour taken out and her natural silver back?

I suspect if she goes to a salon they will try to persuade her to cut or at least keep colouring. :( I think she could handle pushy stylists, but I dont want her to have to, IYSWIM. Can anyone offer advice that doesnt involve just growing out the grey without adjusting the dark blonde colour?

Many thanks from me and my mom.

Lovi

[manderly]

Interesting. I don't know how color oops would react to semi-perm dye on grey hair.

Maybe consider her doing a small patch test of the oops to see what happens? I don't know what color she'd end up with, and I'm curious :)

Interesting thread.

[Dars]

From what I've read those products contain bleach, which is what gets rid of the colour. I'd suspect it would work for your mum but she may end up a lighter grey. I agree with doing a test strand.

[manderly]

No bleach in color oops. It reveals old bleach damage from chemical dyes when it removes the dye molecules, but the oops itself is not a bleach :)

That's why I'm curious about this. I don't know how much lifting semi-perm dye did to the hair prior to depositing color, so I don't know what she'd end up with.

[Dars]

It might have been a different brand, I don't know :p It would be interesting to see the results.

[iris]

This may be a stupid question, but isn't the 'semi' in 'semi-permanent' supposed to mean that it's not really permanent, and will wash out over time?

We're talking about the 28-washes kind of dye here, right, with peroxide but no ammonia? (I have no experience with that type of dye, hence the potentially stupid question above).

If we're talking about that kind of dye, I imagine it's oxidative (hence the peroxide), and so then it should be possible to remove the pigments with color fix/oops. I guess the end result depends on how much the peroxide bleaches out the underlying natural pigment - the worst case scenario probably is that the natural pigment has been affected (only a little bit I imagine, since peroxide without ammonia doesn't usually have a strong bleaching effect), which could mean that the color that surfaces after removing the dye pigment would turn out brassy and lighter than your mom's natural color. Which could be fixed with a toner, but that might again affect her grays if her grays are sprinkled throughout rather than being concentrated in streaks.

Like I said, I have no experience with these types of dyes, so I'm just theorizing. A strand test is always a good idea!

[Loviatar]

Yes Iris that is the kind of dye I meant. On the box it states it lasts 6 weeks. My mom does her roots for 20 minutes and then pulls it through to the ends for 5-10. I will see if I can find a picture of her hair to add.

I had wondered if it would need a toner on it after taking the colour out. her hair is pretty much completely grey under the dye, when her roots come in, but it is a mixture of pewter, black-pepper, white and silver. It's lovely :) I hope I grey up the same way.

ETA: Here's my mom's hair from Christmas. It's a little longer now.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j47/Kate_Blacksmith/DSCF0528.jpg

[Teazel]

Hm. I just let my semi-permanent colour (Wella Soft Colour, medium warm brown) fade out with normal shampoo/conditioning. This was 4 or 5 years ago now.

I imagine clarifying shampoo would have got rid of the dye faster, but I didn't know about it then. In any case, the residual colour really wasn't a problem. It fades fast enough that I don't think your mother's new growth would be noticable. :)

[manderly]

Yeah, I agree that she should just let it go and wash it out. Since its semi, it should fade and she won't get that 2-tone look really. I think messing with the color oops and toner would be more trouble than it's worth.