Instead, you should look for toning shampoos and conditioners that can control the undertone of your hair without turning it another color. This doesn't mean you should cover brassy hair with a blue or purple hair dye. "To counteract yellow hues you need to use something that has violet in it to counteract orange tones you'll need to use blue hues," she says.
As Cheeseman explains, complementary colors - or colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel - neutralize each other. To combat this, Chadwick and Cheeseman both advise turning to the color wheel you might remember from high school art classes. Louis, Missouri-based colorist Kristina Cheeseman always recommends Head & Shoulders Shampoo to clients who need an immediate fix but doesn't recommend relying on it for color-correction in the long term. To do that, you just need a strong clarifying shampoo. "All you need to do is try to reduce the color build up on the hair so your lighter color starts to show through from underneath the darker color," Chadwick says. "Color cannot lift color out of the hair." Though Tang, Chadwick, and other colorists would never recommend trying to completely remove or color over a too-dark box dye, there is a quick way you can soften up the pigments for a look that's less intense.
"People think applying color over already colored hair will make it lighter - this is not the case," Tang explains. Unfortunately, you can't lighten up a really dark dye job by simply dying over it with another, lighter box dye shade. What to do if box dye turned your hair too darkĬhadwick says the biggest rule of DIY hair coloring is to never attempt to remove dye by yourself at home, especially if that dye is darker than anticipated. If you've recently used an at-home hair dye and aren't a fan of the way your color turned out, however, there are a few things you can do to course-correct at home, according to colorists.
#Lighten in the box professional
That's why at-home box dye kits come with far less predictable results and can lead to all sorts of common kerfuffles.Ä«ecause of the COVID-19 pandemic, only a select amount of hair salons are open in the country right now, which means seeing a professional to correct a box dye mistake isn't in the cards for everyone at the moment. In other words, developers can't be customized to your specific hair color with a box dye as they can be in a salon. "You have one box dye that 'everyone' can use and achieve the same color, therefore, the strength of the developer will need to be strong enough to lift very dark hair, even if someone with really light hair is also using it," Chadwick explains. It mostly comes down to the developer, the part of the dye that opens up the hair follicle so that pigments can penetrate them. According to London-based colorist Leanne Chadwick, there's a reason those at-home hair dyes that come in a box can be so fickle.