by Hoc Trinh

Created on: March 14, 2007   Last Updated: May 07, 2007

Two Common Mistakes.
People who like to colour their hair themselves, rather than getting it done proffessionaly often make mistakes.

Two of these common mistakes occur when they are:

1. Going from blond to brunette
2. Going vibrant red

1. Blond to brown
Let me guess. You had blond hair, and then after a while got bored of it and decided to go dark so you coloured your hair dark but it keeps on fading and becoming light again?

When you bleach your hair blond, what happens is you are stripping your hair from its natural pigmentation, thus leaving it with no colour. When you go over your stripped-of-pigment-ed hair with a dark colour, it will merely stain the hair. Rather than absorbing into the hair follicles and the hair grabbing onto the colour and keeping it there. The colour will fade out quickly. This is because you missed a step. What you are meant to do before you colour your hair is pre-pigmentise it. To do this you must apply the pre-pigmentation stuff onto your blond hair. The pre-pigmentation stuff is a liquid and is either red or brown in colour. Apply it onto the blond, your hair must be dry, apply heat to it so it works a lil bit better and leave it for about 10 minutes. And then you can start applying the dark colour you desire.

2. Vibrant Red
Getting that really cool vibrant red colour, people tend to think that they need to bleach their hair first so that the brightness of the red can be maximised. Well no, you don't. If you bleach your hair before colouring it red, I guarantee the ending result will be pink. All you have to do to get that hot fiery red is apply the stuff to your hair like you would any other colour. Leave it for 30-40 minutes. Leaving the colour in for longer than that won't do anything because it stops processing after 30-40 minutes.
The only exception is when you have really dark Asian hair. For the brightness of the red to be maximised, bleaching the hair first is required. But only leave the bleach in for long enough just to lighten the hair so that it is brown/copper. Any lighter and the ending result will be pink.

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