Dying over black hair color

Naturally I have ash brown coloured hair, fair skin and dark brown/black eyes. I recently dyed my hair black. It looks dreadful, and I was wondering how do I lighten it again without having to either let it grow out, or making it go a strange grey colour? Is there anything I can do?

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Use bleach or oxidative colour remover
by: NF

You can use bleach or oxidative colour remover to remove the colour pigments and lighten the hair in one or two steps to a specific stage and that stage depends on what colour you want when finish. For example if you want to have a brunette/brown then the hair must be lighten to a dark orange state. After that you apply the desire hair colour over the whole hair. If you have fair skin tone, then you also need to add ash tones to make it work with your skin colour but not much or else it will look dull.

The process with bleach is straightforward and won't cost much: Shampoo the hair, don't wash the shampoo and apply the bleach and then wash and dye it again. It sounds easy, but the timing and the concentration of the peroxide is critical and the process must be watched constantly by a professional and I do not advice doing this at home.

If you previously used a non-professional (drugstore) hair colour to dye it black, then you need to tell this to your stylist because some of those colours contain chemicals that are not compatible with bleach. Your stylist might decide to do a strand test before choosing a methode.

I can tell you to use a colour remover like Loreal colorzap. This product designed to remove the artificial colour pigments, but that might not be strong enough to get all the black pigments out in one step or worse, your roots might get lighter than rest of the hair. But overall, it's safer to use colour remover rather than bleach at home and works 90% of the time. Once you removed the colour, it turn orange and then you have to dye it again.

Remember, using colour remover depends on how long ago and what hair colour you used previously. If you applied black hair colour over a previously coloured hair (colour over colour), then colour remover might not be effective enough. Read the instructions carefully before choosing this alternative.

Wish you luck!