How to Fix Hair Color Disasters

Whether you've tried to go blond and your hair turned tangerine or you opted for a beautiful brunette shade that came out green, you can fix your hair color disasters.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Deep conditioner for hair
• Laundry detergent
• Corrective shampoo
• Corrective hair color or toner (as needed)
• Hair color (as needed)

1. Use a deep conditioning treatment prior to lightening or darkening hair and after the color or hair color removers have been applied. The hair shaft requires protein to retain hair color deposits and a smooth outer cuticle to avoid discoloration and odd colored fading.

2. Remove excess color with several applications of a strong detergent-based shampoo such as Prell. Shampoo the hair, let it sit for a few minutes, minimize scalp exposure and rinse thoroughly. Repeat as needed for 1 to 3 days.

3. Reduce brassiness in proportion to how extreme the problem is. Subtle brassiness can be corrected with anti-brass shampoo over a period of days. Moderate to extreme brassiness requires hair color correction or products designed to remove brass.

4. Apply a hair color toner to fix mild blond brassiness when the hair color tone is otherwise adequate. Otherwise, the choice to fix hair color is to lighten the hair more with high lift color or to darken the hair to a shade where the red or gold is less prominent.

5. Compensate overly warm colors with an ash-based (cool) color. If high lift hair color or bleach is needed, consider streaking or highlights to minimize hair damage.

6. Get a haircut or trim to fix a hair color disaster that is largely limited to the ends. Hair in poor condition, including split ends, is difficult to remedy. Additional hair color treatments may cause hair to split more. Light reflects differently off of healthy hair and may improve the overall look.

7. Reverse over-lightened or bleached hair color errors by reverse highlighting or applying low lights rather than using hair color on a full head of hair. This minimizes hair damage and generally looks more natural or attractive. Bleached hair does not retain color well and solid hair color tends to fade into unnatural, uneven shades.

Tips & Warnings

• Rinse the hair in cool or tepid water to reduce brassiness.
• Prior to rinsing hair color, lightly rub the hair together and around the hairline. Hair color will attract hair color and remove excess as well as skin stains.
• Check for allergic reactions before using new products on your hair.

[msjoanna]

on 2/26/2009 good to know, I think anyone that does there own hair has had that problem

[favefive]

on 3/8/2008 I could have used this article a year ago when I had a disaster...OMG!

[jpwhickson]

on 2/14/2008 I used to rinse with a blond rinse to color the gray but leave the brown untouched. Once I grabbed a permanent color and I ended up looking like a giant carrot.