Removing bright red hair dye

fosterer

I have dyed my hair with Punky Color (a semi permanent dye like Manic Panic) over my natural hair color multiple times in the past year. I'm tired of the red and I want to get my natural color back so I can bleach it and dye it a different color. I haven't dyed it since December, so it's had it's time to fade. I used One n Only Colorfix, which removed mostly red tones, as my hair is still purple/pink toned. A week later I tried mixing a bunch of crushed vitamin c tablets and shampoo and leaving it in my hair for an hour. Some pink came out, but my hair still has dyes left in it. What else can I do to get this stubborn dye out? Any advice would be well appreciated. Please don't tell me to go to a salon though, I always color and cut my hair myself.

fosterer

bump (the picture attached above is the wrong picture, please ignore it)

curlypearl

Try using Prell shampoo or diluted dish detergent. Follow with loads of conditioner.

I've used dish detergent in a similar situation and my hair survived. My hair was straw like but responded well to the conditioner. It all depends on how unhappy you are with the color.

Firefox7275

Some semi permanent pink tones are legendary for being all but permanent not even bleaching out, check hair dye forums to see if your chosen shade is one of them.

Secondly don't use your head as a laboratory for harsh household or cosmetic chemicals. Collect shed plughole hair and run strand tests. These may damage your skin as well as your hair is overused. Please therefore also run skin patch tests.

You can use a *peroxide free* colour remover such as Color Oops three times BUT these are formulated to remove permanent dye so may do nothing but dry your hair out as they are highly alkaline.

The vitamin C will have made the shampoo more acidic so may have prevented some of the dye molecules within the cortex escaping. You might try a neutral pH SLS clarifying shampoo with nothing added since you have already tried acid and alkali.

Another possibility is a simple conditioner with a little baking soda added. The dye molecules were initially suspended in a conditioner base and the weak alkali may help ruffle the hair cuticle.

If that does nothing it's likely time to crack out the persulphate bleach. Again strand test, strand test, strand test.