Question:
Well, I would like to enlist a little help from those more experienced
than I... I have been coloring my hair since I was 10 (that's only 8
years though!) so I'm quite used to it being totally unnatural. Anyway,
I want to get all the color out so I can dye it a vivid fuschia for
graduation. Now, what's the best way to go about this - do I use a
color stripper, bleach, or both?
By the way, my hair right now is dark blackish burgundy which
complicates things, I'm sure. It is naturally dark brown, I bleached it
about 6346 times, then I wanted it back to black, then I wanted a
little "cherry cola" red... so you get an idea of what's been done to
it...
Answer:
I would very strongly advise seeing a professional for this one,
as you need to apply first stripper and then bleach before
colouring to get the effect you want. As you are going from
black to bright, and have a lot of natural pigment anyway, you
will quite possibly need 2 applications of both stripper and
bleach to get a good base for the colour - there is vast scope
for disaster if you try to do this yourself.
I would also advise that you grow at least 1/2" of root before
you do this. This will mean that the stripper needn't touch the
scalp, and you can also use a gentler bleach on the natural
hair. Otherwise, 2 - 4 applications of chemicals could turn your
scalp raw, especially if you have sensitive skin.
If you want to play it fast and loose, you *could* just apply a
drugstore pre-blonde lightener (ie, bleach) to your hair, which
will probably turn it a light greenish orange shade. You can't
take it down any further than this with bleach without a very
strong risk of it all falling out (which there's a risk of
anyway).You could then put fuschia on top of this, but you won't
get a very clear colour, and it will fade badly.
A couple of other points about fuschia hair - it fades really
quickly - you'll need to touch up at least monthly to keep it
vivid, and it's very difficult (even for a professional) to get
it exactly the same colour each time it's done. On the plus
side, it's not too difficult a procedure to put a different
colour in the red-black spectrum on top once it fades.
