I’ve had a variety of unnatural colours in my hair over the years. I’m lucky enough to have had light strawberry blonde hair, slowly leaning towards an ash blonde. Unfortunately my hair grows very slowly, and for a colour to grow out even with short hair it takes a long time.
The last time I dyed my hair purple with Special Effects Deep Purple, it came out a fantastic dark purple over ‘virgin’ (undyed) hair. However, fast forward a couple of months and it still hadn’t grown out, and I got a light pink girly colour. Ugh!
So then I tried to get it out with two different blonde hair dyes, purchased from Chemist Warehouse. I was going overseas and I was desperate that the customs officials wouldn’t think I was some weird punk. I think I used L’Oreal Perfect Blonde and Clariol Nice & Easy. It lightened it a bit, but I ended up with still pink bits, but they were more strawberry blonde and blended in ok with the rest of my hair. Job done.
I have to say here is that the conditioner that came with the Clariol Nice & Easy dye is a wizard at lightening deeper colours to pastels! I had used Color JamZ Tripped Up Turquoise and Huckleberry Blue at a different point, and it faded these to amazing pastels. I think I will purchase it again if I can find it, because it’s so great. However, it didn’t work on the Special Effects Deep Purple. I’ve looked at some reviews for the Color JamZ colours, and other people had no luck with them, but they stuck quite well in my hair.
I’m a bit sick of the pastels now, and want to try a sort of layered ombre type thing. Cue the vitamin C treatment. I’m currently sitting here with about 10 or so crushed up Nature’s Own Vitamin C tablets (the orange chewable ones) mixed with a 1/4 cup of Head and Shoulder’s Anti Dandruff shampoo. I forgot to take a before picture, so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that the Deep Purple was still as deep purple as ever, but the Huckleberry Blue was faded. [edit] The treatment lightened my roots, faded the blue a bit more to something I feel comfortable dying over but had virtually no effect on the purple.
Something to note is that I had some burning feelings on my scalp while I was using the vitamin C treatment. It gradually went away while I had the mixture sitting on my hair, and I’m attributing it to the fact that the treatment works because of the acid in the vitamin C. Also, I think my scalp is relatively sensitive to the anti-dandruff shampoo as I have also experienced burning with it before. There’s never any visible or long term damage to my scalp however.
So what was frugal about this do you ask? Well, I’ve always dyed my own hair, and I haven’t been to a hairdresser for a trim/cut in over… well, at least 5 years? Perhaps longer… I could have paid for an expensive instant colour remover, or been to the salon, but instead I tried a quick remedy at home that I already had the ingredients for. It may not have removed all the color, but it did improve things. On to more hair color experiments!
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