hi I'm new to glitter and hope someone can help me with a crafty hair question.

i've been dying my hair black for while now and i am sick of it. but i keep getting ugly roots so i keep dyeing it black again. it's a vicious circle. what will happen if I dye it another color, like red? what I wish would happen is that i'd get a nice dark reddish hue all over with brighter roots. but what i'm worried about is that just my roots will dye red and the rest of my hair will stay black.

does anyone have any experience with dyeing over black hair? otherwise i think i'm just going to have to go to the beauty school (they do cheap color corrections) and get the color stripped...but that's not as fun. or just grow it out. phew, sorry this is so long. thanks for any ideas!
maggie

Your hunch is correct, once you go black, that's it. You either have to strip it, or let it grow back to natural.

Some people who do decide to let their own color grow out, but don't want to be overtly two-tone, touch up their roots with a semi-permanent in-between color like a brownish black. Then their next touch up their is less black in their formula. And they go progressively lighter with their touch up over time. Your ends will still be BLACK, but the graduation is more subtle. Or less obvious, I should say.

Once a year I strip my hair of the black, to the orange state, and use Special Effects Cherry Bomb.
I always go back to black though. This year instead of cherry red hair, I tinted my hair my own brown shade. I hated it!

I have dyed my hair a million times, and I would definitely advise going to a salon(or the school) and getting it stripped. It's a long process, and no fun to do yourself. if you still want to grow your hair out, have them dye it as close to your natural color as possible. But once it's stripped, you have infinite options, because your hair will probably be white. :)
meli

Yikes, okay, I guess I'll go to the salon. I have messed my hair up enough times to know this not something I want to do at home. now I just have to decide what color to do next! Thanks
maggie

kind of on the subject, my boyfriend and i put together a "definitive guide to dying your hair" a while ago, it's in my comic strip..

go here: http://www.radcomics.com/d/20010430.html

:)

even after stripping your hair, since it's been dyed black, i doubt it will go white or even light blond. i used to dye my hair black, and when i had it stripped the lightest it would go was dark neon orange. i tried stripping it at home, and it didnt work nearly as well as the salon stuff. maybe i went to a bad salon, because although my hair was lighter, the process hurt like a mofo and i had scabs on my head. that sure taught ME to dye my hair black. i looked like Elvis anyways.

stella

I don't know the slightest thing about hair-dying...I've naturally got black black WAY black hair, Asian girl black hair without the Asian part (so everyone thinks I dye it.)

(From this I can guarantee there's NO dying over black hair. I can't even tint the sucker. I did see someone once with black hair and purple roots - looked great!)

ANYWAY, is stripping your hair before dying something to get the colorant/dye out, or would that enable me to re-dye my hair flaming red like I always wanted?

What do they (gulp) do to you?

HotGlueMama:

If you have un-chemically processed virgin hair you wouldn't have your hair stripped, but you may have some or all of your hair pre-bleached.

Color remover and bleach are not really the same product, although you can use on-the-scalp bleach to strip artificial color if that's all you have on hand. To use color remover (Like Effasol) on hair without color on it, is really not necessary, it's too big a gun.

Or, your colorist may just use a red tint with 30 volume peroxide.

It's totally YMMV, depending on where you go and who you see and what you want.

I agree with selina-k. I've been dying my hair black, and my roots come in blonde, even though my natural color is dark brown. So sometimes I think "I don't want the black anymore, because of the nasty roots" and I switch to Clairol Natural Instincts in Ginger (I think that's the color, any way it is dark brown and is semi-permanent.) Then I start missing my fun black hair and dye it back.
The semi-permanent dye of course doesn't do a 100% root cover, but it's what I will use when I decide to abandon the black.

Penrose

Scabs? uh oh. Maybe I won't go to the beauty school after all. Well, thanks for all your advice. I still don't know what I'm going to do, but now I know what NOT to do. :)

maggie

This is probably the option you don't want, and the one I wound up with - cut it off. Stripping your hair may leave it so damaged that dying it a different color may get tricky, in addition to the dull, brittle, fragile texture of your hair. It will snarl and tangle stubbornly, require massive amounts of TLC and conditioner, and shed all over the place. Even if you can manage to dye it close to your natural shade, it won't look the same as the shiny happy new growth. In my case, after over a decade of coloring my hair everything from auburn to pink to platinum, no-one knew what my natural color was, anyway :)

i stick to the semi-permanent dyes, but once i went to a salon to get it done black, and the color wouldn't wash out after a month, like it was supposed to.. after my roots grew out some, i tried to color it red - and just ended up with bright red roots, the rest still black. eventually i got some of that stripping stuff at rite-aid, and attempted to get the black out. BAD IDEA. my hair turned orange, and it felt like straw. so i colored it red again, which came out nice and bright, but was all different shades.
lesson learned: DON'T LIGHTEN YOUR HAIR AT HOME. eventually i cut half my hair off (which was very painful) to get rid of all the breakage and weird red stripes i had.
ANYWAY, sorry, almost off subject:
so i guess my suggestion would be get one of those black shampoos, that helps blend the roots in better. or the next time you color black, use a semi or demi permanent, so it'll fade out and the roots won't look so henious.

yay, you guys rock. Pixielicious I love your comic.

i think i'll just grow it out for a while and "wait and see" and maybe when the roots are longer i'll dye them red or something and have two-tone hair.