Eyebrow dye error

October 24, 2008 2:29 PM

I dyed my eyebrows--can you help me fix this mistake?

I had done this for years will no ill effects--I can still see, never got any dye in my eye, etc. I haven't for awhile. I decided to to my hair again to cover the gray, and once that was done and my graying eyebrows stood out, I did them too.

And I ended up with what everyone warned me about but never happened before--not blindness but big bushy dark caveman eyebrows.

I'd rather not visit a pro. Is there any DIY solution to this? My hair is dark brown and my eyebrows are now very dark brown and seemingly twice their size.

posted by anonymous to clothing, beauty, & fashion (12 comments total)

You don't want to be doing amateur bleach job next to your eyes. I would go to a pro.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:42 PM on October 24, 2008

Scrub them with a toothbrush and some shampoo or dish washing liquid to help fade the dye. Did you just do it? Sometimes there is dye left on the skin that makes them appear darker and larger than they are. Scrub, scrub but don't get soap in your eyes!

I know someone who did this and had the exact same result. For some reason he refused to scrub them, but after 2 weeks the color faded and didn't look unnatural. After a month, his brows were back to normal.
posted by defreckled at 2:43 PM on October 24, 2008

The same thing happened to me. I used oily (or silicone based) makeup remover for the underlying skin. After that, pluck pluck pluck! It didn't take long to go back to a reasonable color/size, so don't worry.
posted by villain extraordinaire at 3:13 PM on October 24, 2008

You could half-pluck them, or you could shave them off and draw them on as the hair grows back in.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:15 PM on October 24, 2008

Ja, nthing "scrub the skin" - that's most likely what makes them look so big. (cf this pic of me with big red eyebrow)

(just FYI tho, I regularly use bleach on mine without a problem. My bleach is very thick & creamy which prevents it from dripping into my eyes... I'm not blind (yet) tho the ammonia vapours admittedly kinda sting at first)
posted by ClarissaWAM at 4:09 PM on October 24, 2008

Go to the store, get some Prell. Scrub your eyebrows, rinse. Do this until the water rinses clear. Trust me, your eyebrows will go back to normal once the dyed skin cells also shed. This exact situation happened to a friend who dyed her eyebrows black.
posted by thatbrunette at 4:21 PM on October 24, 2008

I would follow thatbrunette's suggestion. Whenever I dye my hair, I've noticed it starts out dark, but gets lighter when I work through with some shampoo for a little bit.

Worse comes to worse, you can be Groucho Marx for Halloween. :-P
posted by arishaun at 5:04 PM on October 24, 2008

My mom gets her eyebrows tinted once every couple months. For the first few days after the tinting (which we call the Eugene Levy phase) it fades a bit to something much less shocking. Make up remover + toothbrush or a bit of clarifying shampoo + toothbrush + light scrubbing should help out a bit. Give it some time though.
posted by heavenstobetsy at 6:10 PM on October 24, 2008

A bit of non-acetone nail polish remover on a cotton swab can help get the dye off the underlying skin.
posted by bunji at 9:17 PM on October 24, 2008

If the scrubbing doesn't work, there is a drugstore product (in the US - I don't know where you are) called Color Oops that I've heard works suprisingly well.
posted by emyd at 12:08 AM on October 25, 2008

I agree with all of the above suggestions recommending using shampoo or dishwashing liquid with a tooth brush and getting the underlying skin. I also agree that in two weeks this will a lot less noticeable. Please do not shave off your eyebrows, it's rare but sometimes they will not grow back. Some with plucking any of your brows you wish to keep.

If you *must* do something soon because you have a big event to attend or something like that, you can slightly bleach some of the color out using facial bleach you get at the store. This is safe and Kevyn Aucoin describes doing this in one of his books, Making Faces, I think. Anyhow, I've done it dozens of times when I used to lighten my hair. You just mix the facial bleach cream according to directions then take an old toothbrush and comb it gently into the brows (it has never dripped on me by the way). Then every minute or so wipe it off with a cotton ball. If you don't like what you see comb some more in and check again after another minute.
posted by i_love_squirrels at 10:19 PM on October 25, 2008

I wish I had those brows that take 2 weeks to fade. I have to do mine weekly to keep them "in color".

Once I overdid mine (which for me involved getting the hair a little too dark, but the bigger problem was that I got too much color on the skin, resulting in a large bushy look), and since I had plans that evening, I gave them several applications of hydrogen peroxide with a Q-tip. Followed by thorough washings. By my plan-time, they were presentable.

These days, when I apply the dye, I apply it to only the exact area I want dyed, to the extent that if the color set to how it looked when the dye was still on my brows, it would be OK. (A little dark, but not "bushy"; they'd be sculpted properly.) This involves a lot of Q-tip and water action over the 30 minutes it sets. But it's worth it, because I never get the "over-color" anymore.
posted by iguanapolitico at 4:09 AM on October 26, 2008