Thread: From brown/red to blonde?

Thanks so much everyone!! You're all so helpful The sucky thing about it is that I wear extensions and I won't be able to for a while until I have the colour that I like. I'll live

Also, just for more info - I've had the dark brown & burgundy for two years now and I've done my roots probably about 10 times and put the colours on my whole head under 5 times for sure. If I use Color Fix or another colour remover, will it turn my hair a lighter brown where I could get away with just using that or will I have to put a colour on top because it may go bright red or orange? Are they damaging to use?

To really understand the Color Fix, you have to understand how dye works - even though the color you're putting on is darker than your hair, the dye still "lifts" color from your hair before it deposits.
So when you use the Color Fix, you can't be sure until it's over what you're going to get. The revealed color will probably fall somewhere in this spectrum, because of color-lifting powers of your original dye:
hair-bleach-stages.jpg
None of those middle shades are very pretty, so you'll probably want to dye over that. But it's a personal thing - I ColorFixed my hair a few weeks ago and still haven't dyed over it yet.
Then again, because your hair is naturally light, you may end up with a color that's quite light and better than you expected. But be prepared and have some dye on hand in a medium brown shade just in case.

PS - just about any product you put on your hair that affects its color is damaging. But my personal use of Color Fix specifically has been pretty gentle. Remember that the color change you're proposing is drastic. Hard to get out of that without any damage.

Thanks! I have an update! I bleached my hair tonight with 40 peroxide and Schwarzkopf blonde me bleach. I asked a friend to do it and I asked her not to get my roots as I have about an inch or so and it seemed very light when I had dark hair so I did not want it to go platinum. Well, she tried but some of the roots still got bleach on it. Overall, my hair is a bit lighter than a carrot orange. It did lift a lot of the colour. However, in some places, my roots are white because it was virgin hair and the spots she did not touch on my roots look dark. I have this problem when I was blonde my roots looked dark and when I had dark hair they looked light? QUESTION - Should I get a mocha brown ish semi permanent and put it on top of this tomorrow? Should it take? I heard sometimes it can go back to the dark you started with because the hair is porous?? Or should I instead wait it out and bleach again and then colour? If so, how long should I wait? No breakage so far and no hair has fallen out. Thank God. Also, what should I do about the roots situation? If I colour it with a brown will it take like the rest or not (the parts that are much lighter that my friend accidentally got bleach on)? Thanks so much!!

Disclaimer: I'm no professional, just been through this with my own hair.

YES, porous hair will darken a great deal more than regular hair. And your newly-white hair will take the color differently too. I suggest trying to match whatever color level your roots are and dying over that using the level-40 developer. Also, try to get a toner with a green/ash tone to combat the carrot color in your hair. The developer will continue to lift more color from your hair while dying, and should deposit a color that's normal-looking enough for your whitened roots ... as well as blending in with your non-bleached roots.

Just another update in case anyone was wondering - After the light yellow roots/orange hair, all I did was put a dark blonde on my roots and then dark blonde and light ash blonde on the rest (the orange) This was ok but the roots were still lighter than the rest. I waited a few more days and put a light brown on my roots only so this evened it out pretty well. So the final product of my hair... It's like dirty blonde/light brown/orange...It's nice in some lighting but in natural sunlight looks kind of orange. Not sure if I should bleach again?