My hair keeps turning orange. What can I do?
July 18, 2013 10:53 PM   Subscribe

I don't want orange hair, but nothing seems to work. Please help.

A few years ago, I dyed my hair light blonde. I kept it that way for awhile and regularly maintained it. Last year, I decided I wanted to stop and I dyed it brown in an attempt to go back to natural-ish. It looked good for a month, then it turned orange. Now, I keep trying to dye my hair brown. I have put ash brown on it and blue brown on it, and while it stays brown for a couple weeks, it always fades back to ORANGE. I have dyed it close to black and it still goes orange. I went to a salon, and the stylist put better quality dye on my hair that faded to orange within a month. Not just sort of orange, like really pretty orange.

I have my hair short now, which is fine, and I want to grow it out, but I don't want to have orange hair for a year. I'd settle for just having sort of orange hair. Do I just need to suck it up, or is there a way to make my hair brown or at least not orange?

Some things I've thought about:

Dying it black (will this work?)
Dying it red, then dying it brown (I don't want red hair, but I read on some random website that this works)
Bleaching it and dying it brown with no red coloration in the dye

I don't mind going to a salon and paying, but I paid a lot last time, and my hair just turned orange again. It was like the stylist didn't believe me when I insisted it would just turn orange in a few weeks. If I go the salon route, what sort of treatment should I be specifically requesting?

Thanks for any tips...
posted by amodelcitizen to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (19 answers total)
 
Did you try "Color Oops"? You can buy it at the drugstore next to the hair dye. Smells terrible, does in fact remove hair dye. I'm not sure it would work after the length of time you have had the dye on you.

My other suggestion is one of those semi-permanent hair dyes that you shampoo in, which rinse out over two or three washes. So you can keep it brown until most of it is back to natural.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:18 PM on July 18, 2013


Color oops won't remove bleach, and WILL turn hair bright, shocking, awesome orange if it wasn't already. Bleached hair isn't going to hold dye very well, no matter what... A few weeks of color over bleach before fading sounds normal to me honestly. I would be using a non-damaging semipermanent dye, cutting how often I washed (as well as using only very mild products, sulfate-free shampoo, etc) and then accepting that pretty frequent dying is going to be a fact of life until the damage grows out.
posted by celtalitha at 11:20 PM on July 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


Elumen adds pigment in a unique way , can only add pigment has no lifting action at all not a chemical reaction no mixing of "developer" just pigment deep into the cortex of the hair .
zero damage .
Or use a henna.
posted by hortense at 11:31 PM on July 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


I am not clear about what your natural hair color is. Is it orange to begin with? All hair color fades, or as our hair grows the roots show.

I recently stopped coloring my hair and had to go through the grow out thing to get to the salt and pepper color that I am now. It took 3 haircuts over 6 months to get the auburn orange color completely out.

If you don't want the color to change you might have to color at least every 30 days with a permanent hair dye.
posted by cairnoflore at 11:34 PM on July 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


Whenever I go from blond back to brunette the hairdresser dyes it red in between, have done this a few times now and it always works.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:56 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Another vote for Elumen. When I wrecked my hair much the same way bleaching it and then dyeing it Rainbow Brite / Lisa Simpson yellow/orange for a long time, it was the only dye that stayed there when I decided to look responsible again. It actually works so well that the dye is there until you cut it out, so choose well. Also, even in my really big city, only two salons do it, so use their search tool.

Otherwise, look for somebody who specializes in color correction - that's the term for this. From what I know (my hair stylist working on somebody else while trimming my hair - not a very scientific sample), color correction costs a mint and results can vary. Good luck!
posted by sweltering at 12:15 AM on July 19, 2013


IME even supposedly permanent dyes fade after a couple of weeks. If your hair is light blonde then turning orange when the brown fades is pretty normal. I use permanent dye and even the ones that are supposedly 'fade-proof' and 'longer lasting' expect you to be doing touch-ups every 4-6 weeks.

Make sure to choose a dye that doesn't have a pre-lightener in it and keep touching it up every 4-6 weeks until the blonde has grown out.
posted by missmagenta at 2:49 AM on July 19, 2013


If I understand what you're saying, your natural hair color is brownish, but it's been lightened and it slowly turns orange after it's been colored, yes?

If that's the case, it's because the natural pigment has been removed from your hair. And haircolor pigments fade, period (except for Elumen).

What you could do, because permanent haircolors all have some type of stripping/peroxide element to their formulas, is to commit to using semi-permanent color until your natural color grows in.

Semi-permanent colors works over the hair shaft...they don't first lighten and then get into the hair shaft.

If every time you're recoloring with a permanent dye, you're stripping your natural brown and dying over the hair shaft, essentially giving yourself orange hair underneath the color.

**Spoken as someone who began college freshman year with Bright Orange Hair because I tried to strip out light orange from the summer and instead fried my scalp and couldn't redye it light brown and I looked like a crazy person and was mortified.
posted by kinetic at 4:29 AM on July 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Your hair is likely actually auburn, which means it contains both melanin (brown) and pheomelanin (red) pigments. If your hair had much less melanin (e.g. if you would otherwise be blonde), you'd be a full-on red head. So, anything that just strips the brown out will leave the red pigments et voila: orange hair.

Perhaps look for a dark auburn shade to blend well with the incoming hair, and re apply semi-permanent dye on a regular basis.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:48 AM on July 19, 2013


I have to dye my hair every couple of weeks for two reasons. The color fades. My re-growth is white.

I recommend collecting coupons and buying multiple boxes when they go on sale. I get my box color for about $2 a box this way.

You can prolong your hair color by using sulfa-free shampoos. Aveda makes them, so does L'Oreal. This will keep the color from stripping out as quickly. Cheap, harsh shampoo will wreck your color.

Other than that, for all the good reasons listed above, I've got nothing.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:46 AM on July 19, 2013


Ardell makes two very inexpensive additives that suppress brassy tones in hair. They can be added to permanent boxed color mixes when you dye (not semi-permanent rinses, though), and can also be blended with conditioner for interim treatments if your hair starts to go orange between colorings. If there's a Sally Hansen or Ed Wyse in your area, they'll definitely carry both.

Red Gold Corrector Plus

Unred

They both work well, but not as well as L'oreal Drabber, which was discontinued a few years ago. I look for it online occasionally, but all I find are online forums where other people are bemoaning the unavailability of L'oreal Drabber.

The generalized name for the treatment/product you want is "toner." When I was seeing a professional colorist (not romantically!) I would go in between colorings for a toner bath if my hair was creeping toward orange. If your municipal water supply is heavily chlorinated or you swim a lot or you shampoo every morning, you'll orange up a lot faster. There are many factors that can bring on the orange.
posted by cirocco at 6:54 AM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


If I understand the the question correctly and you mean your hair goes brassy between dye jobs, it might be worth trying purple shampoo.
posted by kitkatcathy at 7:17 AM on July 19, 2013


Is your hair that is turning orange bleached?

When I was a teenager I had basically the exact same problem as you. My hair is naturally very dark brown, I bleached it many times using god knows what so I could dye my hair pink or blue or whatever. Eventually, nothing worked on my hair, I'd dye it pink or black or red, and in a few weeks my hair would be ORANGE. I saw a stylist who said I had stripped my hair (like kinetic mentioned) from too much bleaching and processing, so I just grew it out.

If you have dark hair like I do, and just use bleach (something like this), without dye or toner, it's very likely your hair will turn bright orange.
posted by inertia at 8:04 AM on July 19, 2013


Brown at-home hair dye blows.

I think if you're absolutely dead set on not having blond hair anymore, you're going to have to go to a salon, at least until the awkward growing out phase is over.
posted by Sara C. at 8:15 AM on July 19, 2013


I've had this problem, because I like to play with hair color. The best solution I've found has been to use black Colorsilk dye, which you can buy for three dollars from any grocery store. It's not a permanent dye, so it's far less damaging than most drug store colors. It starts out as black and then fades with each wash to brown. And then to orange. The significant difference is because it's not lifting color at all, you can just keep reapplying it. And because it doesn't lift color, your regrowth will be its natural color when it washes out. Eventually, you can just cut off the orangey bits, when your regrowth gets long enough.

It's a maintenance method, not a correction method, but it works for me as I grow my hair out.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:21 AM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't know anything about hair dying, but out of curiosity I did a little searching and found what seems to be a pretty good forum frequented by professional hair colorists. There's probably a lot of good info about hair dying in there.

Specifically, I was searching for Elumen, and I found this thread on that that forum. The respondents seemed quite helpful.
posted by KinoAndHermes at 8:59 AM on July 19, 2013


Response by poster: If anyone is still reading, my hair is naturally light brown. Thanks so much for the tips, guys. I am looking into this Elumen thing. I'm not going to mess with my hair until I can find a good semi-permanent dye or until I can get to the Elumen salon.
posted by amodelcitizen at 4:42 PM on July 19, 2013


I have always been told that semi-permanent dye is the key to not having it go orange.
posted by corvine at 6:26 AM on July 20, 2013


I know this thread is a little old now, but I had been bleaching my (light auburn) hair to white blonde for about a year. I finally got sick of it and currently have a very good mockery of my natural haircolor.

I buy all of my stuff at Sally Beauty Supply. To get it back to a normal-ish shade, I first applied a neutral protein filler, so my hair would accept the color more readily. I then mixed "Tan Blonde" and "Light Copper" and left the mixture on for the recommended amount of time, 20 developer. Both are Wella liquid shades. The results were really beautiful, but did fade after 3-4 weeks. It didn't go orange, just a drab light brown.

Sulfate-free/color-protecting shampoos are a good idea. I don't know how much I would recommend purple shampoo. It is great for keeping brassiness out of blonde hair (it's how I maintained my white blonde for as long as I did), but not very good at correcting the orange that over-bleached hair turns after a new dye job.

I know you're sold on the Elumen thing, but if you're ever in this situation again, I strongly recommend a protein filler and some fun experimentation. If you can grasp a color wheel, you can usually make a pretty nifty custom color. Oh! And a purple-based brown would probably have helped. A lot of shades have codes like "V" for "violet" on them. Violet-based dye is great for de-oranging.

Anyway, good luck with it! Orange hair is only fun if intentional.
posted by nohaybanda at 2:05 PM on July 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


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