Hair Dye Disasters And How To Fix Them at Home

So you went to get a touch-up, and your hairdresser was obviously going through a bad break-up, didn’t listen to one word you said and made your hair color a disaster.

Yes, there is always tears and blame, but those won’t correct the problem. Before you resort to making a trip to the local wig shop, read on, and your hair will be back in tip top shape before you have a chance to Manic Panic.

WHIP UP A HOME TREATMENT:
The Dish Soap Method
The sooner you do it after dyeing, the better (I think there’s a 72-hour window or something with the methods I’m telling you about here). After application, it gets pretty dry and tangly, but if you load on the conditioner, it’s not that bad.

Add 3-4 drops of the dishwashing liquid to your shampoo and mix it all together. Wash your hair using just one shampoo treatment. The dishwashing liquid will lift your color a shade or two.

The Vitamin C Method
Apparently vitamin C accelerates fading, so (since you had nothing to lose at this point) gathered your supplies:

I would 100 percent recommend this method — it should work on any deposit color (although obviously can’t help you if your problem is overdoing it on bleach).

① There’s no exact “recipe” for this if you don’t have Vitamin C powder available, just use about 20 tablets of vitamin C and smash them up in a Ziploc using a rolling pin.

② Next, you put your vitamin C powder in a bowl with your shampoo and dish soap of choice.

③ For this batch, I used mostly Head & Shoulders with a few squirts of Dawn for good measure. Now mix it all up, so it’s nice and frothy:

④ Apply this mixture to damp, towel-dried hair, making sure you coated every single strand from roots to tips. Then put on a shower cap and let it sit for a couple of hours before rinsing it out.

⑤ The only caveat is that sulfate-based products if you leave them on your scalp for a long time, can be insanely irritating.

⑥ Because I basically spent 48 hours with this stuff on my head, I was left with a dry, sore, flaking scalp… It took about a week to get back to normal. But sometimes, you have to suffer in the name of beauty.