I am HAIR STUPID.. lots of color ?'s.. you've been warned!!

[runningwithlola]

I have to apologize for probably asking some really dumb questions, but I was raised what I call Hair Stupid: my mom didn't have any idea how to do hair, much less any idea how to do my (curly, wild) hair. I didn't even learn how to straighten my hair til I was 26. I need tutorials on even the most basic hairstyles.

I say this b/c I want you to understand how VERY LITTLE understanding I have about hair and styling and color.

I am SUPER BORED with my hair color right now and desperate for a change, but I can't afford a salon. I've got a few ideas rolling around in my head and thought I would get some advice.

So, here's the state of my hair right now: my roots are about 2" long. They are a med ashy brown like this:

(naturally, I HATE this color).

The rest of my hair is either:
or in a few places, a slightly lighter brighter auburn - mostly my bangs, and a few sections close to my temples.

Some of my hair is quite a bit darker on the tips because I had been dying it black previously. I was unable to bleach all the black out (it was a half-hearted attempt), so i just left it. So there is kind of a subtle ombre effect.


Ultimately I want to go back to white-blonde, but my hair is in the best condition it's been in for years and I want it loooooooong, so I want to take it slow and easy. Right now I'm just thinking of going a few shades lighter and gradually lighter and lighter.

So, let's just say that I want to dye my hair this color:

or this:

or even this:


Question 1:
How do I go about it, what is the process?

Question 2:
Do I lighten my roots to the same level as my dyed hair, and then dye it ALL that color?
Question 3:
How do I know if my roots are the same lightness if they are a different color from the dyed part (I hope that makes sense)??
Question 4:How do I maintain the roots?? ( told you I was hair stupid.. I honestly don't know)

this is the main reason why I always stick with either super light colors that require massive bleaching, or black.. cuz I don't know how to handle roots of a different color, when I am changing the color dramatically.

Now, I love being a red head and my husband LOVES red hair. But because I HATE having normal hair I wanted to add something special, like some HOT pink!

If I wanted to put some hot pink on the tips like this (easier maintenance for me!):

Question 5:
How would I do it? dye it all red as in question 1 and then bleach the tips a bit and add hot pink?

Question 6:How light would I have to bleach the tips to get it to be about the same color as the picture?

Now, forget about the other questions and remember the colors of my roots, dyed hair, and ends. From that, I was also thinking about this color:


Question 7:
What do I have to do to get the same effect? What are the steps, in order?

Ok, last thing: this is probably my favorite of all time:


When going to really vibrant bright colors like this, (and I can see that there is more than one color going on here), how do you keep it from being really light and flat? How would you get a deep, dimensional raspberry like this? Do you not lighten it as much as you normally would? Or do you lighten it a lot, dye it that pink and then dye it something slightly darker to make it darker again? Or maybe mix the hot pink with a slightly darker "normal" dye?? The last thing I want is for it to look flat and one-dimensional.

I'm looking to create a result like this:


(probably, people from the board, SORRY! I bow before you and your coloring skillz... I LOVE IT!!!)

as opposed to this: (pretty!!! but flat, and not the effect I want).



Help? Even if you can answer only a couple questions.. I would really like to get some fun color going, but I feel totally stymied by my lack of knowledge, and am not finding the internet very helpful in giving up these (trade?) secrets...

[MrsEss]

I can't help with everything, you need Madi or Lorny or even Goffy_Luc to answer quite a few of your questions, however.....


I'm pretty sure this is Terri (aka Dollylox) and that is more than likely Directions rubine.

Er, right. Lesseeeee. If you read a box bleach it advises to bleach the lengths first & do the roots about 10 minutes or so before rinsing, this is because the heat from your head reacts with it & causes it to lighten more, so if you do it all at once your roots will be a shade or 2 lighter than the rest. A strand test will be your friend to check see how long you need to leave the bleach on.


Root maintenance can be pretty easy as long as you keep up with upkeep. Section your hair & apply bleach to the natural growth of your hair without overlapping to previous bleached sections (bleach over bleach makes the hair weaker) and then once that is done you just re-colour with whatever hair colour you are.

All of the colours you have linked will require at least one bleach, an actual pic rather than a stock photo would probably help.

[runningwithlola]

Thanks for the help!
I just don't understand, how much do I lighten the roots then? They are a little darker than the rest, so do I just lighten them until they match? WILL they match at some point?? cuz my roots are ashy brown and my dyed hair is more auburn. that's what I don't understand. Am I OVERTHINKING this??? LOL

I wish I could post an accurate pic but my camera died a horrible death. These are the most accurate photos I could find though.

[MrsEss]

A strand test would help you, as you can time exactly how long you need to leave the bleach on your hair & if you cut the strand to include your undyed hair you'll be able to see if the colour difference is huge or not.

[Goffy_lucc]

I'll try my best to answer some of your questions to the best of my knowledge.

The thing I will say is if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, your best bet really is gritting your teeth, put up with the roots and save to go to a salon. I know this sounds mean, but messing about with bleach can ultimately be fatal to your hair if you don't respect it.

First of all, my hair is the same colour of yours, so your regrowth is similar to mine. Here is the state of my roots before I went through the process of bleaching them:



and actually, a long time ago I had an assemble similar to what you're describing. You aren't going to achieve a white blonde with such diversity of colour in your hair, especially the black tips, you're going to have to be very careful.

Right, onto your questions.

1. The process will all depend on how a strand test comes out, the type of dye you wish to colour your hair with, the actual shade of the rest of your hair (it would be really REALLY useful to have a picture for reference)
Let's start with the regrowth, I always bleach my roots without bleaching the ends, reason being is that I don't want to damage the ends of my hair and regrowth is a lot more porous than the ends so I would probably end up with a result I do not want. I normally go with 30vol. of peroxide but I have been known to use 20vol as my hair is very porous and will lighten to a platinum blonde very easily.

2. You can bleach your hair as light as you want. The lighter you bleach your regrowth the more vibrant the colour you apply to it will be. I'd say to bleach it to a medium-blonde colour, then apply your dye over the whole of your hair (if you're using a chemical, not a vegetable dye) If you're using a semi-permanent such as SFX or Manic Panic, you'll want your hair to be as light as possible for it to take to the hair more.

3. This is honestly normally just trial and error for me. Sometimes I have had complete disasters, sometimes it has been a pleasant surprise. This is where strand tests are so vitally important, so you get a rough idea of how things will turn out when you apply to the whole of your head. I grabbed this off google quickly and skimmed it, but here's how to do a strand test http://haircrazy.info/beginner-guides/h ... rand-test/
It is actually vital to do this if you have no idea what you are doing! I normally collect strands from behind my ears AND at my nape, just because I'm paranoid. I've become so confident with bleaching my regrowth and the strength of my hair to peroxide that I hardly ever do a strand test anymore.

4. You maintain the roots by repeating what you're doing here, just on your roots primarily, and spread less through the lengths (just to maintain the colour)

Now that's the roots over I can actually help you with the next bit! I used to have red/pink/auburn hair for YEARS!

5/6. It's tricky doing your own tips. You'll need a friend (or rope your husband into doing it ) As for the red itself, if it's similar to that colour you can use Shwarzkopf XXL real red (or the burgandy wine or whatever it is) and it will probably go over your roots easily without needing to bleach them, because it did for mine and was very easy to maintain (literally buy it, apply it to the roots first, leave for ten minutes then spread the rest into my lengths)

As for the tips, you'll need to bleach your tips (use a tint brush and basically just brush it onto the end of your hair and rub it a bit) to get them as light as possible then apply a dye such as New rose by manic panic in the same fashion. Again, do a strand test!

7. Errr... I've never actually gone blonde/brunette, or done any of my friends' hair this colour before so I'm going to pass on this one. Don't want to give you any information that's dodgy!

8. As for the pink, to get that multitonal effect, it does take a lot of effort but it is worth it.
You'll need to bleach the whole of your head to get it as light as you can. I've had mine a medium blonde and it takes fine.
Again, I'm showing off my hair again but it'll help let me explain how I did it.



I have orange, red, purple, pink and they were all achieved by mixing and experimenting.
My hair was pink before I dyed it, but I did have to bleach my hair to a light blonde before I could actually dye it pink, and you're aiming for something as non-yellow as you can.
You'll need a few plastic bowls to mix your dyes in and tint brushes to apply with. I used a mix of SFX virgin rose, cupcake pink, atomic pink and then crazy colours' fire and orange. I took a section of my hair at a time and dyed it one of those colours, sometimes I mixed the colours in the bowl before applying to get a different effect. I did that for my whole head (doesn't matter if the colours mash in together, it will create a nice gradient) then left it for a few hours (Only leave it on if you're using a vegetable dye, never do it with a chemical dye ) then washed it off and viola!


Hope that helps, I rambled a bit. Feel free to ask me questions if I don't make any sense and I'll try and explain what I mean

[Bomber]

what I will recommend is that if you are eventually planning on going white blonde, reds and pinks are not a good idea. They are extremely hard to remove even with bleach.

[Miss Liberty]

for the third and second to last photos, the one's with that pinky purple color, bleaching to a golden blonde and using Special Effects Virgin Rose will get you close. I've got a Virgin Rose undercolor at the moment. I dyed it over faded orange and its a deep magenta.

[Goffy_lucc]

what I will recommend is that if you are eventually planning on going white blonde, reds and pinks are not a good idea. They are extremely hard to remove even with bleach.

^ah yeah, so true.
That's why I went blue, as I was no way going to be able to go a lighter colour lol

[Mkatsi]

Question 1:
How do I go about it, what is the process?

If you want to go with a redish brown, your best bet is to get yourself either a box dye, or order a professional colour and some developer. These colours lighten then deposit colour, most of the time unless your roots are very different, the colour should be the same over everything especially as you are only going from brown to a redish tone here.

Question 2:
Do I lighten my roots to the same level as my dyed hair, and then dye it ALL that color?

Again, unless its very very different, I would say no. Its quite difficult to try and get an even base colour lightening at home that isnt 'orange'. You can try a very low level developer if you wanted to attempt this.

Question 3:
How do I know if my roots are the same lightness if they are a different color from the dyed part (I hope that makes sense)??
I'm not sure how to answer this! Sorry!

Question 4:How do I maintain the roots?? ( told you I was hair stupid.. I honestly don't know)

Whatever colour you buy, get two of! If it has a pre lightener or a developer, then you'll likely only need to touch up your roots with that rather than bleaching each time, then colouring.
You'll need to be careful not to cross colour over colour/overlap the predyed bits to avoid build up.
Use a rattail comb to lift the layers of your hair and paint on the dye with a brush on the virgin roots. Make sure to read the instructions on how long to develop since the roots always develop more quickly because the heat from your scalp speeds up reaction time.

Question 5:
How would I do it? dye it all red as in question 1 and then bleach the tips a bit and add hot pink?

I would personally do it all at the same time with veg dyes to reduce bleach damage on your tips. The easiest way to do tips is to paint the red dye on (that colour is very like Dark Tulip by directions) with a brush, and leave the tips, then using gloved fingers, drag the pink dye onto the tips using your fingers should help blend the colours. If you are scared to do it this way then just do the red, wash, then on the left out bleached bits, do the pink. Since the veg dyes don't use developers, you don't have to worry about colour build up or over development or even overlapping colours, they are designed to mix and blend.

Question 6:How light would I have to bleach the tips to get it to be about the same color as the picture?

To get the pink in the picture you'll need to bleach to around a level 9, you might get away with an 8, lighter is always better, but pink is usually quite good at covering orange tones.

Question 7:
What do I have to do to get the same effect? What are the steps, in order?

Ok, you'd have to lighten all your hair to a the base colour light brown, you could probably just use a box dye to do this. You would then need a highlighting kit, there are loads of good ones in drug stores for different levels of hair, they vary from using a highlighting cap to a tiny brush. Personally I would use a lightening kit (rather than bleach for this) and make your own foils. Basically cut squares of kitchen foil out, then place a small strand of hair onto the foil, paint on the lightener using a brush, then fold the foil upwards to keep it clean and out of the way as it develops. Repeat in all the sections you would like lighter tones.

When going to really vibrant bright colors like this, (and I can see that there is more than one color going on here), how do you keep it from being really light and flat? How would you get a deep, dimensional raspberry like this? Do you not lighten it as much as you normally would? Or do you lighten it a lot, dye it that pink and then dye it something slightly darker to make it darker again? Or maybe mix the hot pink with a slightly darker "normal" dye?? The last thing I want is for it to look flat and one-dimensional.

The rule with bright colours is generally, the darker it is, the more healthy and shiny the hair looks, and thus the more dimensional. When your colour is fresh, it always looks more tonal, but as it washes out, starts to look flatter as the cortex of the hair is no longer chock full of dye- it looks flatter because it kind of, sort of, is.

Depending on the exact shade you wanted, you could get a professional colour with developer and dye your whole head the raspberry colour, these tend to look nicer, but last less time. You'd then need to bleach out sections for the other colours, or omit them. You can buy colour blockers, or for veg dyes, use conditioner and foils as blockers. (cheaper option!)
As I said before you could probably do it all at once, choosing darker tones, or mixing your own from various veg dyes (as long as they are from the same familu, i.e. all directions, all manic panic) that tone would probably be a strong pink with a touch of dark purple. Slap it on, omit the places for the other colours, and paint those on. Its probably best to use foils on the places of the smaller colours even if its for huge pieces. I tend to just turn my rubber glove inside out on the hair and use that to keep one colour from the other.
Make sure you have lots of pins and grips to keep bits away from other bits (Not metal clips! They will affect the colour)

Hope this all helps!

[runningwithlola]

THANK YOU everyone!!! Very helpful! I will post more but I wanted to say thanks. I've been doing some strand tests and my BFF and I are going to give it a go tomorrow.

[Goffy_lucc]

Let us know how it goes honey

[Dollylox]

This might be a bit late now but yes that is me, and it's Directions Dark tulip I think, but that might have been after a few washes, maybe the normal tulip would be more like the o=colour in this picture

I can't help with everything, you need Madi or Lorny or even Goffy_Luc to answer quite a few of your questions, however.....


I'm pretty sure this is Terri (aka Dollylox) and that is more than likely Directions rubine.

Er, right. Lesseeeee. If you read a box bleach it advises to bleach the lengths first & do the roots about 10 minutes or so before rinsing, this is because the heat from your head reacts with it & causes it to lighten more, so if you do it all at once your roots will be a shade or 2 lighter than the rest. A strand test will be your friend to check see how long you need to leave the bleach on.


Root maintenance can be pretty easy as long as you keep up with upkeep. Section your hair & apply bleach to the natural growth of your hair without overlapping to previous bleached sections (bleach over bleach makes the hair weaker) and then once that is done you just re-colour with whatever hair colour you are.

All of the colours you have linked will require at least one bleach, an actual pic rather than a stock photo would probably help.