Is there any way to get Splat hair dye out?

[Sicorre]

My sister dyed her hair green with Splat semi-permanent dye. It's been a few months and it's still really green. She has naturally brown hair and didn't use the bleach. But she left the dye in like an hour longer than the package said, cuz she thought it would come out in a few days if she didn't. Hehe. She certainly got it to last longer. XD
She's tried shampooing it several times in one shower, using dish soap, using hair dye remover... nothing works. I think she's stuck with permanently green hair. Got any ideas of how to make it fade?

[Anje]

Head and Shoulders has quite a reputation for fading stuff, and is probably easier on hair than dish soap.

I'm not sure if something like Color Oops would work on this dye or not. It would be worth looking into, but it might not hurt to stand test it first.

[lazuliblue]

I once used a blue manic panic dye (which is supposed to come out after several washes). Eventually it turned green and months (and months!) later it was still visible on one part of my hair, although it was a pale colour. I tried everything to get it out, but the compared to the other colours, green seemed to be the most stubborn colour to remove and I just had to wait until my hair was long enough to trim the colour out.

[Lyv]

I usually use head and shoulders mixed with crushed vitamin c tablets and leave it sit for 30min before washing it out and seems to work well for me.

[Freija]

I have been there so, so many times, seriously... Big hugs to your poor sister.

The best thing I've ever found for removing stubborn deposit-only dye is the following process:

1. A warm olive oil soak. Apply the olive oil liberally, enough for your hair to look and feel really greasy, and then use gentle heat - a heat cap, a hairdryer, warm towels, anything warm. Wrap the hair in clingfilm and warm towels and leave it for anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours.

2. A LONG conditioner soak. As an added bonus, conditioner is the very best thing to use to help get rid of all that olive oil once you've put it on. Usually I'd soak my hair in the oil for a couple of hours, then absolutely saturate my (dry, oiled) hair with palmfuls of conditioner. I'd work it through thoroughly, then use a heat cap/hairdryer/whatever again to warm it all up. I'd wrap it back up in clingfilm, cover it with warm towels, and leave it for another few hours.

3. A long CO wash; and clarifying shampoo. This works best with a shampoo that is actually designed to remove everything from your hair. I think Neutrogena do a decent one in the US, otherwise look for one which is designed to be used to prep your hair for dying, perming and other forms of processing. Clarifying is honestly not very helpful by itself (as your sister will have found with the washing up liquid), but it can be quite good as the final step of an oil/conditioner removal method.

First, I usually add a bit of really warm water to my oily-conditionery hair, not too much, not enough to wash the conditioner away at all - then lather like mad, massaging through the lengths for about five minutes. Then I add a bit more warm water, more lathering/massaging. More water, more massaging - then I squeeze the excess lathered conditioner/oil out and add a couple of palmfuls of fresh conditioner, massage it through, add a little water, massage, bit more water, massage, squeeze out the lather, bit more fresh conditioner... even when nothing else has pulled any dye out in weeks, I usually get the conditioner lather turning coloured at this stage - so I keep doing this until the conditioner-lather is back to its normal white. I'll then give it a fairly long rinse in warm water to pull out any extra dye, and as much of the oil/conditioner, as I can. Finally, I'll apply the clarifying shampoo neat all over the lengths of my hair as well as my scalp, lather it up, and leave it for 5 - 10 minutes. Then I'll rinse again until nothing else is coming out, condition a final time, rinse, and go dry off.

This does no damage, doesn't dry your hair or scalp, and can be repeated as often as you like. Honestly, it's the ONLY thing that has ever pulled out any of the lingering, stubborn brassy red from Directions and Manic Panic dyes, or at least muted it enough to tone it. I won't say it's a perfect solution - but it's had the water running orange when nothing else would.


I've also tried vitamin C soaks (you crush a good-sized handful of cheap, plain vitamin C tablets into a powder and mix it with a clarifying shampoo, or with conditioner, leave it for an hour or so, and rinse it off). They faded the dye a bit, definitely, but they also irritated my scalp and they can seriously burn your eyes.

I've been down the routes of Head and Shoulders shampoo, baking soda, washing-up liquid and similar things. These are all just methods of clarifying, which can be useful to start with, and can get a lot of dye out if you do it very soon after you first applied it - but it will quickly reach a point where it can't pull any more dye out, even though your hair is still stained (your sister sounds like she's reached this stage, definitely).

Finally, I've used the 'Colour Oops/Colour B4) box dye removal kits on several occasions, but honestly, deposit-only dyes are the wrong dyes for them. These kits are designed to work with the typical permanent chemist box dyes, where you mix a bottle of colourant with a bottle of peroxide developer (so that the developer opens the cuticles of your hair and lets the dye molecules of the colourant penetrate it). The remover kits then work by shrinking the dye molecules/breaking the bonds they form with the hair/opening up the hair's cuticle to let said molecules wash back out. Unfortunately, though, deposit-only dyes don't tend to penetrate or form bonds in that way; they just stick to the outside of the cuticle, where they are meant to slowly get washed off, but actually often leave a very, very stubborn, strong stain. So opening the cuticle doesn't do much. Box dye remover kits can help, definitely, but only in the same way as a very strong clarifying shampoo.


So - my recommendation is to try the olive oil and conditioner. It sounds too gentle to possibly work, but for me it's been amazing. In any case, good luck to your sister. It's not fun at all, I know, and I do feel for her. I just hope I've been able to help a bit!

[pastina]

^^i was going to post suggestions, but that is wonderful advice, and she said everything i would have! ('cept i would have said coconut oil to soak, because that's the only one i've really tried myself!)

[Sicorre]

Thanks for all the info. She tried head and shoulders, but it didn't do anything. Tried to get her to do the thing Freija suggested but she's too lazy... ah well, if she's not willing to try anything that takes effort I guess she's gonna be stuck with green hair for a while. *shrug*

[MINAKO]

Thanks for all the info. She tried head and shoulders, but it didn't do anything. Tried to get her to do the thing Freija suggested but she's too lazy... ah well, if she's not willing to try anything that takes effort I guess she's gonna be stuck with green hair for a while. *shrug*

hahaha, way to go sis! ))

[Arete]

I've found that splat fades the quickest of all the semi-perm dyes I've tried, except over freshly bleached hair. When I put it over hair that wasn't bleached it came out in three washes with regular shampoo.
Something else to try would be to crush up several vitamin C tablets, put it all over her hair and let it sit for awhile.
Another alternative would be to layer over it with a blue semi-perm to give her turqoise/teal if she'd prefer that, though don't use Splat blue as it fades incredibly fast.

[pastina]

i had an incident involving splat recently.

about two months ago i bought the green color because i badly needed a color refresh and because i had no access to anything else. im not the biggest fan of splat because ime, it doesnt last.

my hair was already lightened (and id never use box bleach-- i prefer to buy those components separately), so i took the color bottle to the bathroom with me, and left the rest of the included stuff in the carton on the dresser in my bedroom. my husband was watching my boys in a different part of the house.

well, at some point, my husband needed me, so brought both boys up with him. he caught my older son--22 months old at the time-- with the "white stuff" in the splat box. he took virtually nothing out of the bottle, barely a sip, but it was enough. he foamed at the mouth for a few seconds and coughed and cried, then violently threw up the contents of his stomach.

because i do my hair all the time, i knew that the "white stuff" was peroxide. but, it was not clearly labeled. it has something cutesy on it, like splat oxide, or something. i figured a super small sip of peroxide wouldnt be all that dangerous, because i remember giving my dog hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting, but i called poison control anyway.

they basically told me that 30 volume peroxide would make my boy extremely miserable, but anything stronger and id need to bring him to the emergency room.

like all box color, splat doesnt indicate the volume of their peroxide. .....anywhere. to be completely honest, my son wasnt displaying signs that i needed to bring him to the hospital, and hed fallen asleep in my arms after he vomited and we cleaned him up. but i still wanted to know for my own peace of mind.

when you call their hotline, you get directed to their website unless you nave an extention. so, i checked their website looking for a phone number, and all i could find was a form to fill out so someone could email me. i couldnt find the info i needed! so i typed an email into that form.

i told them my very young child drank their peroxide. i told them poison control needed to know its volume to be able to tell me whether or not this was an emergency.

days went by before i got a response, and the response was simply, "it's 30 volume."

...oh hey thanks. my baby is doing better, by the way, thanks for asking.

ok, it was obviously not the company's fault that my kid got to the peroxide, but they could have answered my obviously distressed message with a bit more compassion, and definitely with a bit more urgency. i tell this story because i really hope it loses the company business.