Advice on bleaching.

[Erehsidne]

Last year in June I damaged my hair dye to bleaching it too many times.

It’s now been about ten months since that happened and it’s been growing out alright. I have been dying it green with manic panic dye, but now I kind of want the dye gone and it’s not fading at all. There are still parts of my hair that has been bleached in the past left, so how stupid would it be to try to bleach the green out of my hair, ten months after my bleaching accident?

[Janineb]

It would be stupid, sorry! Hair never actually recovers from bleach damage. You can patch it up with products that contain silicone and they'll make it feel better but it's still damaged underneath. Bleach it again and it'll only be worse. You can bleach the unbleached hair, but don't bleach the previously bleached hair.

What result do you actually want? Blonde? Brown? There are ways of toning. With green you need to use pink to tone it to a neutral colour.

[Erehsidne]

Ideally I’d like to go for a more blonde option. But I’m open for a colder blue gray sort of look too. Do you think a pink dye from manic panic could help?

This is the shade I have at the moment.

[Janineb]

It'll only make a brown I'm afraid. And it will be tricky to not have it look muddy as it's still quite bright.

You could get a deepish blue grey. That would probably be the best option.

[Erehsidne]

Thanks for the reply!


I tried taking some photos in daylight outside for a better representation of my hair. But maybe it’s still too dark. How dark of a brown would pink make this?

Left is without direct sunlight and right side is with direct sunlight on my hair.

[Janineb]

Direct sunlight isn't usually the best representation normally because the light reflects too much and the camera can't deal with the colour and tends to wash out the colour. I've done blue many a time though, so I've got a very good idea of the depth of colour you have, it's going to be too dark to tone to blonde.

So, I'd say a light at the very best, but mid brown probably. To be honest, you'd be better off using a coral colour (rather than pink as it's more blue than green and orange tones green) as a filler and then dying it brown. You need to knock back some of the brightness and if you don't tone it first it will end up a khaki green/brown. It would be safer than trying to tone it with pink, orange or coral along.

[Erehsidne]

Would you think it would be possible to achieve something close to this color?

[Janineb]

Yeah, that should be fine

[Erehsidne]

What kind of brown dye should I use after neutralized get it with a coral pink? thank you so much for your help. The brown in the picture above is my natural color and it’s quite cold.

[Janineb]

Honestly, I'm horrible at advising for doing actual natural colours! I haven't had a natural colour, other than black which is sort of natural, in over 15 years. Even then it was various shades of red and only because I was working in public facing roles!

However, Adore do some good browns. https://www.beeunique.co.uk/hair-dye/adore

The nice thing about using Adore is it's not damaging at all, so you can keep topping it up as you need to. You can also mix the colours to get the perfect one. I think most of them are a little on the warm side, so you just need to add a little green or blue to knock that back to an ash, just a teensy tiny amount.

[Erehsidne]

I hope I’m not annoying you with my questions, but I’ve been trying to was the dye out with head and shoulders pretty aggressively these past few days and I think the ends of my hair has faded a little, but the rest is a quite light green/yellow now. Is there any chance to make the blue/green tips less green and more of a Smokey blue sort of color? Just trying to look at all of my options. 😅

[Janineb]

Try purple shampoo. It might take out enough of the yellow to make it steely/smokey blue. Leave it on for 5 mins. If it takes it part of the way but not far enough, try again for 10 minutes etc.

[Erehsidne]

I have a pruple hair dye from manic panic that I could dilute enough otherwise!

I’ll do some strand tests! (I have pink and orange-pink as well)

[puerkz]

i would try a different method. using clarifying shampoo with some bicarb and lime might shift some of the green. you lather it on damp hair and leave it on for half an hour. it is drying so make sure to rinse really well and then add a moisturising conditioning mask  after.