Fading Chemical Dye

[owlathena]

There HAS to be a thread on this somewhere. Why can't I find it??!?!

Anyway...

I dyed my hair very dark brown last December with "temporary" box dye. I knew it was going to last a long time because I've been using the same brand and color for years and it always lasts for much longer than "28 washes." But now I really want to fade out the color as quickly as possible (without using coloroops or colorfix or anything chemically or that has the potential to be damaging).

I've been using coconut oil regularly, as I've read that it might help fade color, and I've also tried honey lightening a couple times. I haven't noticed any difference with these though.

Has anyone had success fading color with coconut or other oils?

What other more gentle methods are there?

[Siiri]

Shampoo with SLS is not recommended for a coloured hair, because it fades colour. So you could try doing a "deep treatment" with a clarifying shampoo. I'd keep it in hair for a good while, say, an hour. After that you should do a coconut oil or other moisture treatments with oil, because shampoo dries your hair. The longer you keep the oil the better. It's best not to mix the shampoo and oil, but use them separately. You could do this maybe once or twice a week at most, but if your hair is already in bad condition, I would stick to just oiling it. Doing deep oilings should fade the colour, as you said. Do you CO-wash or use shampoo with SLS regularly? If you CO-wash, you could swich to shampooing and conditioning. It's much easier to fade new hair dye, you have had yours so long that it's more difficult to fade it now.

[Lianna]

I've used a honey treatment to fade color before (it was permanent color).

[UltraBella]

I faded mine considerably with a clarifying shampoo made for swimmers. Paul Mitchell brand was the one I specifically used. I used it twice a week and within the first three weeks there was noticeable fading. My hair was not negatively effected, same condition as before, just much lighter :)