Hairdresser's Advice

LOL it is a common misconception that box dyes are 'good' for your hair. If it contains peroxide it is going to cause some level of damage. A demi permanent, 28 wash dye is less damaging because they use lower strength peroxide, they are designed to only deposit colour rather than lift your natural colour first, which is what permanent dyes do. The trouble with box dyes is that they generally contain a higher level of peroxide than they strictly need to.

I have used Olia and it defo left my hair feeling much nicer than other box dyes - it's got oils of some description in I think. BUT that was just how it felt, not the actual integrity of it.

As far as I am aware (I'm not an expert by any stretch) your hair will be damaged to some extent by any dye that uses peroxide, even if it also contains other conditioning treatments and yes it is a permanent dye. Unless you want to make it lighter as well, could you use something like Adore instead? They do lots of natural colours.

I've seen the ingredients of olia. While I can't say if it had silicones in it, one if the top ingredients is Paraffinium Liquidum. I might be wrong, but my thoughts are it acts a lot like silicones. I don't have a major problem with that, other than it'll make the hair FEEL like it's in great condition, but that doesn't mean it is. They say there's 60% oil in the dye (specifying in the small print that it's 60% in the colourent cream) and have a pretty sunflower on the box, but the flower oils are way down the list. Long after Paraffinium Liquidum (also known as mineral oil). I don't fully trust what they're claiming.

And... Well, hairdressers aren't always the best educated on dyes...

I wouldn't use it honestly. If your highlighted areas are damaged, it's not safe to use peroxide on them, I wouldn't even use a demi with a low vol. It can have the best ingredients in the world in it, but the peroxide is still going to damage the hair. I would use a semi on them like Adore has a great range of natural and unnatural colors

And just a thought along the same lines (I hope, and sorry if it's not!) - if 60% of the oil is in the colourant cream, and that's mixed with peroxide for application, how the heck would the peroxide not eat away at the oils?

Just because you would never be able to get away with mixing any conditioning treatments with bleach and peroxide... the combination would never let the conditioners survive, so I would think peroxide would do the same thing.

And now learning that the Olia has got mineral oil, that is quite good at 'coating' hair, so maybe that's the bit that survives and makes the hair feel nice!  I wouldn't think any of the good conditioners would live through being mixed with peroxide, but maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks for all the tips everyone!  Yes I've been using Adore for about the past 5 months since I damaged my hair really badly trying to highlight it.  I've only used peroxide on my roots in order to get the Adore to stick to new growth.  I am getting really tired of this dark hair though.  I MIGHT try doing a bleach bath soon but try to cover up what's left of the highlighted areas with foil or something to keep the bleach off those bits.  The rest of my hair seems pretty healthy.  Even after using Adore in darker colours (paprika) it's obvious to see the difference of colour on those bits.  Much of it has been cut off, in fact my hair used to be one length but is now layered in order to get rid of as much damaged hair as possible.  I have all the products I need for a bleach bath but feeling a little scared about doing it so I don't know.....