How to get green tones out of ash brown

kinkyreggae

For the last 9mo I dyed my hair Red Hot from Sally's. I was fed up of the high maintenance so I decided I wanted to go light again. My natural hair is light brown. My hair is 3a & in pretty good shape.
The lady at Sally's told me to use color remover then dye it ash blonde. I did it & it came out ok w/out much damage. The color was a light brown with some dark blonde highlights I guess you could say.
I don't know what possessed me to want it lighter but the never satisfied idiot in me did a bleach bath. My hair turned out a horrid brassy orange & yellow mess. In desperation I went to cvs & bought a light ash blonde box dye which didn't do much but make it more brassy. Ugh!
This morning I dyed it light ash brown w/a box dye. It's darker than I prefer but overall it's ok. Also, on my top crown, there's a slight green tone to it.
What can I do? I've given up on making it light. I just want normal, embarrassing free hair. The damage isn't too bad considering I've put it thru hell this past week or so.
I just want to figure out how to tone or get rid of the green cast on the top.

CGSince2002

Yikes... too bad you didn't think of coming here before you embarked on that "misadventure", unless a person understands how the color wheel works, it's not a good idea to change tones drastically at least without first doing some research.

But, cheer up, your present problem has a very easy solution which may already bee in your fridge: ketchup (or catsup). Red neutralizes green, so just coat your hair with it and put a plastic cap on it and leave it on for at least 1/2 hour (test a strand to see results) and then rinse off and condition.

Just so you know what you did wrong, instead of the bleach bath, which always pulls red/orange tones, you could've used an ultra=light ash blonde on top of the brown and left it on for 45 min. Although normally "dye doesn't remove dye", since the ultra-light shades have very little pigment, the lift properties of it still can lighten the hair one or two shades, I've done it before with great success.

HTH!

Pseudoavatar

You could also try a food coloring rinse or leave-in "toner" for your hair.
Basically, for the rinse, you can add a couple of drops of food coloring (in your case, red is probably the best choice) in your final rinse (I use vinegar, water and food colouring). I have done this with blue or purple colouring for blonde hair, and it's turned out quite ok. The downside is, that you need to do this every 3-4 washes to maintain the tone.

For the "leave in toner", you can add a few drops of food colouring in your normal leave-in, or just put a bit of water, conditioner and colour in a spray bottle. I would definitely test this on a strand of hair before going all out though. It can be hard to find the correct amount of color on the first try. I think you should be ok though if you have dark hair, I've never over-colored my blonde hair with the blue color even though I've experimented with different amounts. It just gives a more ashy tone and balances out the oragey tint in my hair.

CGSince2002

I used to do that myself, in fact, I mixed in blue food coloring with a LI last month (I had an ash dark blond on that had gone brassy), but I don't often recommend it because not everyone is good with the "kitchen chemistry" :mrgreen: so to not complicate things I recommended the ketchup, but if she's up to it, yes, it works!

kinkyreggae

I tried that red food color & it didn't do much. :dontknow: What i did was pick up wella color charm in light golden blonde with 30 volume developer. I did my entire head, back to front. Then went back & did my roots with dark blonde & 20 developer. It came out looking medium brown but has now faded to a dark blonde. Im quite happy w/the results & am going to leave it alone. Thanks for the replies!

CGSince2002

I'm curious... how did your hair look after you did the light golden blond? I'm guessing maybe lighter than you expected...? And, is that why you used the dark blond on your roots? I'm also thinking that maybe you left that one a bit too long on your hair for it to turn "medium brown", a thing to remember for the future, in case you may still want to put another color on top at some point, is that once hair's been colored the cuticle will let new color in instantly and it will develop very, very quickly, a few minutes are usually enough.

CC is what I use and more than once I darkened my hair because all it took to refresh the length to get any brassiness out was like 3 min., any more than that was always too much because the hair will keep taking pigment. Also, I still remember how many years ago I ended up with raven black hair after using a medium or dark brown and not rinsing it soon enough.