RED HAIR TO BLUE HAIR TRANSITION!

Now, if you are experienced in home dying or experimenting with your hair you will know how notoriously difficult it is to remove the red pigmentation from hair. You may also be aware that to get blue hair your hair has to be very, very light. If any brassy tones remain we are told it will not work and in the past for me, that has proven to be true.


My Hair


I have been trying to strengthen my hair this year since I had a good few years of bleaching the shit out of it. To calm that little voice that screams "dye your hair Janna! Dye your hair!" I have a pin-up style fringe and dye my fringe instead of my whole head (you can see this to the right) still unhealthy for my hair, but better than me bleaching my whole head. The before picture is actually the day before I dyed it blue so this is the most accurate picture as to what colour it was before. Although it had some orange tones from my red dye coming out on the ends of my fringe, it was by no means faded thoroughly so I began this process with 95% of my fringe being a bright, vibrant red.



The Vitamin C Method

Although I have dyed my hair A LOT I have never used this method. I often brushed it off as having no chance of working or making a difference because it seemed weak to me but I was pleasantly surprised... I crushed up four Vitamin C tablets and mixed it with enough shampoo to cover my fringe and the consistency surprised me. I left for a few minutes and came back to find the concoction had foamed up and had turned orange due to the tablets. I did the vitamin C method twice as after the second try I saw no difference from the first time I did it. I was really surprised to find it had lightened my hair significantly and my fringe was about 50% orange but the red at the top didn't seem to budge with this method. I would highly recommend it though, it definitely provides a visible difference, isn't damaging and is very cheap. As you can see I look so damn attractive with cling film on my head.. dayum girl.



BLEACHING - DUN DUN DUNNNN

After attempting to remove the red healthily and not getting it completely where I wanted it I decided to bleach it. You can find the products I used down below, the bleach and developer came from Sally's and there is no bleach to developer ratio to stick to... just make a smooth paste, easily found if you YouTube it. I knew I would probably have to bleach it so the Vitamin C method was really just minimizing the job the bleach had to do. I bleached my fringe three times and the picture to the above is the outcome. I ideally wanted to bleach it twice but this wasn't the case. After my third round of bleaching you can see I was left with very light roots and although the picture does not translate this, the red lifted to a pale pink/peach colour. I bleached it once more and saw no change so I decided to use La Riche's Directions White Toner.



Toning and Applying the Blue 

I swear by Directions and would HIGHLY recommend the brand to anyone who wants to dye their hair an un-natural colour. Their dyes are semi permanent but I find they last a considerable amount of time and not only are they vegetable based meaning they are not damaging to your hair, I find them very conditioning and you can also mix pots to achieve the desired colour. Although I have used many different colours by La Riche I have never used their toner (pictured above. You can see it's a pastel purple colour, great for toning yellow.) I found it to lighten my hair quite significantly and further remove the red pigment that was still slightly visible in my hair. The result was very successful, you can see this from the difference of the pictures. I think it definitely integral in successfully applying the blue to my hair. I could see the white toner had worked on the parts of my hair which were blonde and had lightened the peach colour the bleaching left behind. After this process I did not see any way of lightening my hair any more that it already had and decided to apply the blue.

This was the nerve-racking part. I applied the blue knowing my hair wasn't quite the colour I was advised it should be but I got impatient and put the dye on anyway. I used Directions again, Lagoon Blue this time. Once the dye is on, from experience I usually can tell if it's going to take to the hair or not and I was confident it would.

AND THIS WAS THE RESULT! 

I have included a before picture and three after pictures. I absolutely love this colour and I can see myself keeping this for a long time which is incredibly rare for me. I am thinking of mixing some green with the Lagoon Blue to have some different tones in there but I will keep it mainly blue. This is a colour I can tick off on my to-do list and I hope you can now acheive it with my honest and simple steps. Leave a comment if you have any questions and GOOD LUCK!