Bleaching black to natural haircolour nightmare, opinons please?!

[pink.sara]

So I posted a thread about a month ago debating whether to lighten up my dyed black hair to red.

The idea was to get as close to my dark auburn as possible and grow out my natural colour.

So I have so far used 3 treatments of colour B4 (a bleach free artificial dye remover) which took it to darkest brown with only a bit of black tint to the midsection.

And today I decided to try a 20 volume bleaching mixed with shampoo to stave off the worst of the damage, I coconut oiled pre bleaching and applied to the ends first then worked up to the roots for only the last 10 minutes..... results are: ginger roots, almost black midsection, lighter auburn ends :(

It seems I either need to suck it up and grow it out (should take about 4 years to get this length out) or dye it back almost black.

Or go mad and put a vegetable Manic Panic type poppy red all over it so I have red roots and the darker ends are kind of like a reverse ombre?! SLZ did this with green for those of you who remember her.

Thanks for reading this mini essay, hope it wasn't TL:DR and honest opions are welcome... what do you guys reckon? HELP!!! :confused:

[spidermom]

I'd go for the Manic Panic because it doesn't damage. Plus it's fun!

[fridgee]

I think the manic panic will look amazing! Plus it's only temporary and will give you time to work out what you want to do, if you want to dye back black once the manic panic starts fading you still can. :flower:

[red-again]

I second the sticking red on it. That was it will just get less and less as your virgin hair grown in and could I reckon look really unusual and cool! I loved pravana vivids in red - didn't stain my neck, hands etc at all like directions or special effects did. I am now back to henna and indigo and my nat colouris nearly black anyway so it ,arches in (and covers greys!!) I am about to our my last tube of pravana vivids onto the swap board as it is just sitting there now so just giving you a heads up ( pun intended)

but either way, I say go for the red!! Gotta love red!!

[pink.sara]

I'd go for the Manic Panic because it doesn't damage. Plus it's fun!

This is true, I think I should stay away from the bleach from now on! I seem to have bleach compulsion issues :rolleyes:


I think the manic panic will look amazing! Plus it's only temporary and will give you time to work out what you want to do, if you want to dye back black once the manic panic starts fading you still can. :flower:

Thats true about the fading too. If it looks awful I can always go back to dark. :)


I second the sticking red on it. That was it will just get less and less as your virgin hair grown in and could I reckon look really unusual and cool! I say go for the red!! Gotta love red!!

Well I think there's a general consensus reached. Off I go in search of red.

Thanks very much ladies. I think I'll go for the fun option :)

[lapushka]

How about sticking a (regular) semi permanent red on it? Maybe keep doing that until it's all grown out or you trimmed most of the darker color out.

[pink.sara]

Eeesh, didn't have enough red to cover it all so I'm currently sat with a semi permanent red on most of it and a bright red veggie colour on my streak.

Really am hoping there isn't a band of black around my ears to grow out :headache:

[theodora]

Only found your thread now, so can only offer my support, too late for advice now, but I'll be checking to see what happened.
Only thing I can say is veggie dyes are always the better option as they won't damage, whereas other types of semis/demis still do have peroxide which damages less than bleach, but still does damage.

[pink.sara]

Only found your thread now, so can only offer my support, too late for advice now, but I'll be checking to see what happened.
Only thing I can say is veggie dyes are always the better option as they won't damage, whereas other types of semis/demis still do have peroxide which damages less than bleach, but still does damage.

Sadly I'm all to aware of different processes and the potential damages, unfortunately the black I used won't shift with colour B4 or vitamin C soaks so I resorted to bleaching.

Also the results were so patchy I decided on a permanent with a 20 volume developer on damp hair (making it a semi effectively) to try and soften the differences in the length.

If I'd known the black nice 'n' easy semis had metallic dyes I'd never have tried bleaching but I didn't discover it until I saw the reaction with the peroxide. Huge hair disaster!

I'd thought only Feria and Just for Men had that cr@p in nowadays! :rolleyes:

[theodora]

Yikes that's no good, what a pain! Metallic dyes are actually very common for darker colours which is why they're so hard to remove. Colour B4 is great but it really can't help with these much.
And I understand wanting to get rid of a colour at all costs, I really damaged my hair last year trying to get rid of henna (3 colour B4 and 2 bleach baths...). I don't regret it at all now, and if you've got fairly thick/resilient hair you'll be okay in the end.
Wishing you lots of luck with the process and hopefully your hair will get wear you want it to be eventually! Keep us posted ;).