My reason for doing this is twofold. First, the stock colours that the hair comes in tend to have a lot of red in them. Generally, I get better ash tones if I dye the hair myself. Second, the factories use fabric dye to colour the hair, which is almost impossible to lighten. When it comes time to bleach my knots, the colour lifts much more easily from hair that I have dyed with proper hair dye.
In a perfect world, I would be able to choose the dye for the colour that I'm after, and use it on any hair to achieve a perfect result. However, life is never that simple.
Here are a couple of tests I made using the same hair colour on two different kinds of hair. The sample on the left is average quality wefted Brazilian hair I already had. It took the colour exactly as I was hoping it would, giving a nice natural ash brown/blonde. The sample on the right is the new hair. It is much softer and finer, and will be beautiful to work with. However, the colour reacts very differently to this hair, and I end up with an ugly purple-grey.
If I knew more about colouring I could work with toners to get rid of the purple, but I just want a simple one-step process that will give me the results I'm looking for. I'm going to have to try another brand of dye and hope for the best.
If anyone reading this has any suggestions about what I might be doing wrong, please don't hesitate to comment. Advice is always appreciated! :)
Hello I read your post. In the coloring there are not errors. The two types of hair are different. The hair purple ash have many red pigments and are more porous. They look fine and are cuticleless .... Hair are the problem.
ReplyDeleteHi, thanks so much for your reply! So would the results be more predictable on hair that still has the cuticle? I have recently bought some unprocessed 'Brazilian' hair. It seems very good, and still has the cuticle. My idea is to bleach it myself, and then dye it to the colour I require. Would that be better than working with the pre-dyed hair?
DeleteThank you for showing us your beautiful work. The hair if they are natural and unprocessed, bleached once and then stained should give you the same shade of your choice. Beware the bleach makes the hair porous hair may take the color very quickly. Try first the color on a strand and then all over the hair. If you notice that the color is darker, color an other strand using a two or three shades lighter. The bleached hair are excellent for the ash tone, little to red coulors in that case hair must have a prepigmentation. I’m hairstylist when i use extension i prefer buy bleached hair and dye by my self so i can have exactly the color that i need.
DeleteThis is really excellent information, thanks so much for taking the time to reply! I have been thinking that it's best to bleach the hair as little as possible, but what you are saying makes sense - that the results are more predictable if the hair is well-bleached, instead of trying to apply colour over the red undertones.
DeleteDo you have any tips for bleaching dark hair? I have been trying to bleach the some virgin, unprocessed brazilian hair (about 1B colour) and I'm having a hard time getting the colour to lift to a light yellow. Even with 40vol developer, the best I have achieved is a light orange colour. I am always afraid to bleach more than one hour, especially with 40 vol. Is it OK just to keep the bleach on the hair until a #10 level is reached?
Hello Dave transform blacks in blond hair is very risky, they become porous fragile will break easily. I buy hair platinum blonde, are shiny healthy and not break. You can try to lighten your blacks hair but is a risk. From base 1n want get to 10n, are 10 shades of difference! Attention can destroy the hair. You may want to try coloring only a lock and see the result. Do not use the peroxide at 40 is too strong and develops the red pigment. Use a peroxide 20vol, 35/40 minutes after the oxidizing power ends. After 35-40 minutes of laying rinse all, dry and proceed with another discoloration. You have to climb many shades, so you should repeat the application until you reach the tone that you want, in your case a 10n. uses a bleaching antijellow antired. If you want to try for fun ok but it is a method which I think is too expensive. How much bleach and peroxide you use? In order variables are many. What was original hair color? How many red pigments they had? Hair are black natural or colored with a dye industry? My advice is to buy platinum hair and enjoy all the nuances of color, the blond white color base is very predictable, you'll have fun and you will avoid spending a lot of money and hassle.
DeleteThanks again for all the great information! You're right, it probably makes more sense to just buy #613 or #60 hair and dye it. I was just thinking that I would be able to control the amount of processing by bleaching the hair myself. It is impossible to know what has been done to hair that is commercially bleached, so I thought that buying unprocessed hair and bleaching it myself would be worth a try. But you're right, it is a LOT of extra work, and I'm sure that the results wouldn't be much better than commercially bleached hair.
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