Has your hair turned orange after dying blonde? That’s not all that unusual.
While you’re probably not happy about this turn of events, don’t panic. Since it’s happened to other people, this means there are fixes in place to get your hair back to blonde without too much hassle.
We’ll walk you through the process and make fixing your hair as easy as possible.
Why Did Your Hair Turn Orange?
Why did my hair turn orange? This question is probably one you’ve been asking yourself. It’s essential to know the answer before attempting to correct the color and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
If you were dying your hair blonde, you probably used bleach. The likeliest scenario is that you didn’t leave the bleach on long enough. When you apply bleach to your hair, you strip color from your hair, and if you don’t use enough, you end up revealing the base color rather than removing it.
There’s usually a lot of red pigment in dark hair, even if your hair appears brown or black. If you don’t bleach correctly, you leave a lot of red pigment behind. The pigment will appear orange when combined with the lightning from the bleach.
If you bleach correctly and apply a blonde hair dye, it’s usually enough to color this pigmentation. But, because you didn’t use enough, the blonde won’t be able to cover the revealed base color.
Different Types of Orange Correction
So now that we know what happened, how do we fix it? There are a few different ways to correct your orange hair.
- Tone the orange color to a blonder color (or to a darker color)
- Directly apply blonde hair dye to the orange (this will depend on how orange your hair is)
- Dye your orange hair to a darker color
The method you choose will change based on your desired result and how dark your hair turned. Because an incorrect bleaching process causes this, the orange you have will be darker or lighter depending on how long you left the bleach on your hair and how much you used initially.
Toning
The resulting color will change based on how orange your hair is but the method is the same.
If you were trying to get blonde hair, you probably know something about toning. When you dye your hair blonde, it goes through a yellow phase that you tone out with a neutralizing color. For a yellow to a blonde, that color is violet.
If you have orange hair, the toning process is the same, but you need to use blue as the neutralizing color. You can apply a small amount of blue dye.
Blue-based dyes include ash-brown or dark-ashy-blonde. You can also buy a blue toning shampoo to wash your hair daily until you get a desirable color. Blue toner will not turn orange hair blonde. Instead, it will give you brown to light brown hair.
This method is worth it if you don’t have the money for another salon treatment (toning shampoos are usually reasonable, as are blue-based dyes), or you don’t want to risk damaging your hair further by applying more bleach. The resulting color will be different than your natural hair, so you’ll still end up with a new look.
Dying Your Orange Hair Blonde
If you’re ok with using more bleach, this is how you’ll finally get blonde hair. Do what you were initially going to do, and add more bleach. This step will complete the lighting process and allow you to then tone your yellow bleached hair to the desired shade of blonde.
The only thing you should be aware of is that you need to wait at least a week before you take this step. Bleach dries out hair. Since you’ve just used it, you should give your hair time to get back its natural balance of moisture before applying it again.
Another thing to remember is that you’re applying bleach to your now orange hair. You shouldn’t need to leave it on as long as you did the first time. 20-30 minutes should get you from orange to yellow.
Once you have your lemony-yellow hair, you can begin the process of making it a natural-looking shade of blonde. The exact shade will be up to you, depending on how blonde you want your hair to be.
Another note about bleach; your bleached hair is incredibly porous, so it will absorb any color exceptionally well. You should pick a blonde dye one level lighter than the color that you want.
Go Darker
If you’ve reached the point where you don’t want to add any more bleach (or maybe your hair can’t take any more damage), then why not go darker.
You could simply choose a dye close to your original color, and then you never have to think about this ordeal again. There won’t be any roots growing out and no maintenance.
If you feel like just going back to normal after all this trouble is ridiculous, that makes sense. Pick a color, any color. Orange is also a light base, so as long as you pick a dye darker than your current orange, it’ll cover it nicely.
We still recommend using a blue-based or ashy color to counteract the orange fully, but if it isn’t too deep, any dark color dye should show up well.
Conclusion
Fixing hair turned orange after dying blonde isn’t tricky. You can quickly achieve your blonde hair dreams through toning or dying. And remember, some accidents are happy ones. You can use this mishap to discover a whole new look for yourself!
Meta: Looking in the mirror to see that your hair turned orange after dying blond can be alarming. This guide helps you combat anxiety and fix the problem at hand with various simple options. You can stop the frantic search for how to fix hair that turned orange after dying blonde. You have found the right place!