Indigo turned my hair green - will it ever come off!?

**Soraya** · June 29th, 2008, 03:58 PM

Long story short - I used henna on my hair and bleached it out. I wanted a cool shade of blonde so I did indigo glosses. It worked a couple times, my hair got closer to the shade I wanted, but then it suddenly turned moldy green after one treatment.

I've tried pretty much everything - bleach, color removal, henna, bright red dye, brown dye, oil soaks etc. The dyes cover the green for a few weeks but then it'll show through again. It's been six months and I'm NOT liking this. My hair is so short that I'm not comfortable cutting it. Am I doomed to eternal greenness?

(The indigo box says it contains "Indigofera Tinctoria. Nothing else".)

**lora410** · June 29th, 2008, 04:18 PM

Have you tried baby shampoo or Avedas shampoo that strip out chlorine etc? I just bought some but can't think of the name of it. Anyway, the guy told me that it strips out hair color right after it is dyed if a person dislikes the color.Will it work for you I have no idea. There really is no way to reverse bleaching process; so if this is what happened when you bleached then you are pretty much stuck with it.

**Riot Crrl** · June 29th, 2008, 05:06 PM

If it's been six months and all those things tried, I doubt shampoo is going to do anything.

You might want to check out Celebrian's posts in this thread: http://www.longhaircommunity.com/for...ead.php?t=2661 It's long and I don't recall which page her hair turned green on, but it's in there somewhere.

If you are getting a few weeks of coverage out of the dyes, it seems to me the best option might be to continue with those until it grows out.

**tiggerousity** · June 29th, 2008, 07:16 PM

Sayora,

You probably already know about the henna for hair webpage

www.hennaforhair.com

Maybe some one there can help?

I used to henna with Catherine's stuff and found the forums over there on henna/indigo really helpful. Although when I wanted to stop the henna I ended up cutting all my hair off. To get through that phase I wore head scarves and caps.

Keep us posted on what works

Best,

Tigs

**Celebrian** · June 29th, 2008, 07:45 PM

Hi, I'm the Celebrian referred to above. I've been dealing with 'green' issues for months too. Mine came about when I bleached over a henindigo mix. I also tried to further bleach, dye, scream, pray etc. and also tried multiple henna's - which barely touched the green (mine's in patches over my hair).

To date, it looks as if putting a really vivid red PPD dye on (I used Herbal Essence Radiant Ruby - but that may be too dark for you) does penetrate the green hair shafts. It remains to be seen whether or not it stays in there! And, because my green effect was quite dark - the red that I've pushed into the hair has resulted in a purplish brown. I'm currently doing strand tests with bleach to see if I can break the color up a bit and make it easier to grow out (I too do not wish to cut my hair!). These show that once a vivid red dye has entered the cuticle, bleach may be applied for a short period to lift some of the red dye back out - but leave enough in to counteract the green = sort of goldish-red. I don't yet know if this will be a permanent state of affairs - or whether the red will come out of the cuticle in a few weeks anyway - leaving me with lighter bits of green against a darker green background!

I feel your pain! PM me if you want further details/updates.

ETA: Anyway, I'll probably be re-henna'ing again once all this is over! But, as I'll probably always want highlights in some form - I'll be avoiding indigo!

Riot Crrl, I was green from the very start of that thread. It was meant to be a 'grey' thread only, but turned into a 'green' one as well!

**Oskimosa** · June 29th, 2008, 07:50 PM

What about colorfixx followed by a breif, thinned out henna? Just a thought...

**sibylla** · June 30th, 2008, 01:19 PM

Have you tried ketchup?

**wintersun99** · June 30th, 2008, 01:23 PM

From my personal experience, nothing got the green out/to fade... I tried all of the abovementioned ideas. The only thing that worked for me was to reconcile with it, henna'indigo back to a darker color, and move on.

Be very careful with the bleach, I did that too, (that's how I got to green) but I also lost about 6-8" that melted off from damage, not to mention to 2-4" I've lost since then, in trims.