Horrible stains from ash blonde dye

[peachyscissors]

Hey all! My sister decided to go lighter after years of black box dye (dragged through the ends every single time) over her natural level 3 hair. She used a colour remover herself which she said resulted in quite a nice dark brown, then she had two sessions with a hairdresser in her town. She says her hair lifted pretty well the first session, and in the second session two weeks ago she had a colour melt done that came out acceptable (not her final colour goal, but she was fine to leave this session with this hair although it was still a little patchy in places). She said the hairdresser used a light ash brown and a dark ash blonde, but she's not into hair so didn't pay attention to the brand or specific shades, and the result came out around a level 4/5 on top, blending into a level 6/7 towards the ends.


At first my sister said it was a little brassy still, but wasn't bothering her too much. I finally saw her this week, and the top 8 inches of her hair is now extremely brassy brown, with a 3-4 inch band of lighter brown with a horrible khaki tint fading into a fairly neutral level 6 at the ends. After I qualified I didn't do much hair work, especially not complex colour correction, mainly basic cuts and colours whilst working mobile mainly doing extensions for a year or two. She wants to continue going a little lighter (end goal, think Beyonce golden blonde/"bronde") and I told her I'll help her fix this mess only if a strand test shows positive results, as I'm not experienced in corrective work.


We tried a strand test to see what bleach would do. The old brassy brown top part lifted beautifully and quickly, and from this point her golden "bronde" is very achievable IMO, but the khaki band became a murky pond water type colour. I'm talking a smokey muddy greenish blue hue. I'm assuming this part of her hair was quite porous and this unpleasant colour was caused by the undertones of the ash dyes, because she was very stubborn and used to faithfully use the exact same brand and shade of box dye and never did anything differently. I'm assuming it's a case of neutralising the colour, because out of sheer curiousity I bleached the strand test repeatedly just to see what happens and even after two more applications of Schwarzkopf BlondMe + 30vol developer it was barely budging, just stayed a smokey denim type colour. We used to play around with fashion temp colours as teens, blues and greens and reds, and even then I never experienced any colour as resistant as this.


Has anyone experienced anything similar when trying to remove ashy colours? The likelihood is I'm going to send her to an old colleague who now specialises in blonde hair and difficult colour correction, but if there's any recommendations on how to make my poor sister look presentable in the mean time by neutralising the green hue I will be extremely grateful to hear as she's happy to stay at this level for now, as long as the khaki (and ideally some of the extreme brassiness on the brown top area) can be sorted because she's really down about how it looks and was extremely upset with the strand test. Any advice would be extremely appreciated.


Thanks!

 

[ronray]

Hey all! My sister decided to go lighter after years of black box dye (dragged through the ends every single time) over her natural level 3 hair. She used a colour remover herself which she said resulted in quite a nice dark brown, then she had two sessions with a hairdresser in her town. She says her hair lifted pretty well the first session, and in the second session two weeks ago she had a colour melt done that came out acceptable (not her final colour goal, but she was fine to leave this session with this hair although it was still a little patchy in places). She said the hairdresser used a light ash brown and a dark ash blonde, but she's not into hair so didn't pay attention to the brand or specific shades, and the result came out around a level 4/5 on top, blending into a level 6/7 towards the ends.


At first my sister said it was a little brassy still, but wasn't bothering her too much. I finally saw her this week, and the top 8 inches of her hair is now extremely brassy brown, with a 3-4 inch band of lighter brown with a horrible khaki tint fading into a fairly neutral level 6 at the ends. After I qualified I didn't do much hair work, especially not complex colour correction, mainly basic cuts and colours whilst working mobile mainly doing extensions for a year or two. She wants to continue going a little lighter (end goal, think Beyonce golden blonde/"bronde") and I told her I'll help her fix this mess only if a strand test shows positive results, as I'm not experienced in corrective work.


We tried a strand test to see what bleach would do. The old brassy brown top part lifted beautifully and quickly, and from this point her golden "bronde" is very achievable IMO, but the khaki band became a murky pond water type colour. I'm talking a smokey muddy greenish blue hue. I'm assuming this part of her hair was quite porous and this unpleasant colour was caused by the undertones of the ash dyes, because she was very stubborn and used to faithfully use the exact same brand and shade of box dye and never did anything differently. I'm assuming it's a case of neutralising the colour, because out of sheer curiousity I bleached the strand test repeatedly just to see what happens and even after two more applications of Schwarzkopf BlondMe + 30vol developer it was barely budging, just stayed a smokey denim type colour. We used to play around with fashion temp colours as teens, blues and greens and reds, and even then I never experienced any colour as resistant as this.


Has anyone experienced anything similar when trying to remove ashy colours? The likelihood is I'm going to send her to an old colleague who now specialises in blonde hair and difficult colour correction, but if there's any recommendations on how to make my poor sister look presentable in the mean time by neutralising the green hue I will be extremely grateful to hear as she's happy to stay at this level for now, as long as the khaki (and ideally some of the extreme brassiness on the brown top area) can be sorted because she's really down about how it looks and was extremely upset with the strand test. Any advice would be extremely appreciated.


Thanks!

Box dyes very commonly have stains in them which helps the colour last longer. What it sounds like to me is that the hair has become more porous as you suggested, making it more difficult to remove the staining. Bleach and lifting tints will not have helped in this case. What you'll need to strand test with is a direct die lifter. As for the patchyness of the colour, I don't see how the hairdresser can be held responsible knowing what the strand test you did revealed. I think this is a matter of and uneven base and poor porosity. Color correction is very rarely a quick thing. Its generally a process and can take quite a few attempts to get it spot on. I wouldn't consider lifting the hair anymore until you've removed the staining, what will happen is that when yiu bleach the hair the background will becone lighter but the colour at the front will appear brighter, because the staining happens on the surface of the hair whereas the depth comes frm within the hair. So it almost like adding white or yellow to blue. It will make it lighter and brighter and harder to get rid of.
There are a few products that are available to remove direct dies, but they do take more than one or two applications.