The most common mistakes when dyeing your hair
The most common mistakes when dyeing your hair are related to choosing the colour. It is often too dark, not taking into consideration your skin tone, and the fact that as you age, your hair becomes lighter than before. Another frequently mentioned mistake is dyeing your entire hair every time.
1. Help, it's too dark!
The number one mistake: the colour you picked looks too dark. This happens quite often. The way the colour will turn out, always depends on the colour and structure of your own hair. Having a colour that ended up too dark is rather pesky, because you can't dye dyed hair any lighter. You can get rid of the dark colour faster by washing your hair as soon as possible a few times with a paste of warm water with crushed vitamin C powder tablets mixed with shampoo. Is this not working sufficiently? Then we recommend that you either be patient or go to your hairdresser. Read about the vitamin C method and more options in our blog on what to do if your hair has become too dark.
How can it be that your hair colour turned out too dark? At WECOLOUR we've replaced many harmful substances with healthier alternatives. Our dye contains a lot of natural pigment to give good coverage without using ammonia. Sometimes this makes the colour a little darker. This is especially the case with ash tints and for example the hazelnut light brown (6.71), the golden dark blonde (7.3), golden blonde (8.3) light golden blond (9.3) and the 7.7 caramel dark blonde. Definitely watch out if you have thin, porous or damaged hair. Your hair then absorbs the pigment better, making the colour look darker. Your hair can be damaged and/or porous because:
- your hair is damaged due to bleaching, decolouring or highlights
- your hair is curly - curls sometimes also absorb the pigment very well
- you've been dyeing your hair with dye containing ammonia for a longer amount of time
- you used some sort of chemical treatment on your hair
- your hair is damaged due to blowdrying, straightening or styling it
In conclusion: always pick a lighter alternative to the colour you want when you're using it for the first time. If that makes the results too light, you can always dye it to a darker tint. And at WECOLOUR, you'll get a free new dye colour if you're unhappy about your first pick!
2. Too dark if you're turning grey
We frequently see people wanting to dye their hair back to the colour it was before it turned grey, but often this ends up looking unnatural and too harsh.
It's makes sense that people want their old, trusty colour back. But if you turn older and the pigment in your hair disappear, the pigment in your skin does, too. Your skin colour will be a little lighter and more pale. A colour that's a little lighter will then look better than your old natural colour. An extra advantage is that your white or grey roots stands out less with a lighter colour. Are you (turning) grey? We've written a blog about which colours look best when your hair turns grey.
3. Using a cool in stead of a warm colour (and vice versa)
Cool hair colours are 'in' right now. Many fashion magazines have photos of models with beautiful cool-blonde or cool-brown tints in their hair. Stunning, of course, but not fit for everyone. How do you make sure you're not tempted to buy a colour that doesn't fit you? It's very simple! First, check what kind of undertone your skin has. It's not about if you have dark or light skin, but about the colour that is beneath. Look at the skin on your face (without makeup) and use the following test. Make sure you do this in daylight!
White towel
In front of a mirror, put a white towel or t-shirt next to your face. Does your skin look pink, red, purple, or blue-ish? Then you have a cool undertone. Our ashtints will look great on you! Or does your skin rather look yellow-ish or pale next to the towel? Then your skin has a warm undertone. Warm hair colours will look good on you. If you don't see any undertones in your skin, there's a big chance you have a neutral undertone. Congrats! Both cool and warm colours will look good on you.
Wrists
Look at the inside of your wrists. Are your veins blue? Then you have a cool undertone. Do they look rather green? Then you have a warm undertone. If there's no obvious answer, big chances are that you have a neutral undertone.
Silver or golden?
There's another way to see if you have a cool or warm skin- and hair type. For that, perform the towel trick mentioned above with a sheet of tinfoil and with something golden, like a golden sheet of paper. If the silver flatters you more you're a cool type, and if gold is more flattering you're a warm type.
You can fall in love with a certain colour, but if it doesn't fit your skin it just won't look as good. You'll look pale if you use a warm colour while having a cool undertone. If you have a warm undertone, the warm colours will make you shine! Natural colours are also possible, they'll look good on anyone. The natural colours are the colours which end on .0
4. Dyeing all of your hair every time
Another hair dye mistake, we often see people dyeing all of their hair while they only have your roots showing. This is unnessecary, you can dye only your roots a couple of times before having to dye all of your hair agian. Because our dye has a shelf-life of up to 12 months, this is a lot cheaper. You won't need the whole tube if you only need to dye the roots, so you don't have to order a new package. You can only store the dye if it hasn't been mixed yet with the developer, so watch out for that. Once it's mixed, you can't store it and it's only usable for up to an our.
Depending on the length of your roots and the thickness of your hair, you'll need a quarter (15 grams) to half a tube (30 grams). Mix this with the same amount of developer; see the user manual. Only apply the dye to your roots. Let it sit for 20 minutes and thin out the hair dye left with water. You can use this to freshen up the lengths of your hair. After 15 minutes (0r 25 for our ash nuances), rinse it out. If you don't want to freshen up the rest of your hair, leave the dye in your roots for 35 minutes or 45 with our ash nuances.
The stacking of colours and damage to your hair
If you dye your hair over and over again, there's a big chance the colour looks darker every time because the pigment will stack up. Especially with low-quality hair dye! So is the colour getting too dark for you? Maybe you're just dyeing it too often (while there's still colour in your hair). It's also better for your hair not to dye all of it every time you have your roots showing, because most dye still damages your hair to some extent. WECOLOUR dye doesn't damage your hair, it even cares for your hair. So when you're dyeing with WECOLOUR, you won't have to worry about damaging your hair.
5. Not taking your own hair colour level into account
Some people don't get any results when dyeing with WECOLOUR. Most of the time, it turns out that the chosen colour wasn't suitable (probably too light) for that type of hair.
Dyeing to a lighter colour
With our hair dye (this also counts for most other brands), the most levels you can dye undyed hair lighter to, is two. Our developer only contains 6% hydrogen peroxide. The only type of hair you can't dye lighter is black and very dark brown hair.
So before dyeing your hair, take a look at how dark/light your natural hair is and determine the so-called colour level. The best places to see this are the places that haven't been lightened by the sun, like the hair in your neck or your roots. Haircolours (colour levels) are determined by the first number of the hair dye code. These numbers range from 1 (black) to 11.1 (very light ash blonde). The number on the left side of the dot is the colour height. This means that if your natural hair colour level is 5, you only can dye your hair to a colour that begins with a 6 or 7.
You can't end up with a lighter colour. Our 11.1 lightens your hair up to three tints due to the 9% hydrogen peroxide developer. This means you can choose the 11.1 if your natural hair is at an 8 or higher (lighter). You can also possibly order the 11.1 with 12% hydrogen peroxide. You'll have this option when ordering the dye. The colour then lightens up more but it also does more damage, so watch out.
Dyeing to a darker colour
Do you want to dye your hair darker in stead of lighter? That's easy! Up until the colour level 7, you can dye it all the way to black 1.0 in one go. if your hair is lighter than colour level 7, for example a 9, it's better to go darker in small steps. First dye your hair to a colour level 5 and then dye it black.
Do you want to dye your hair from a light tint to one of the red tints? That's possible, but watch out: if you have really light, bleached or highlighted, grey or white hair, the red colour can be really bright!
You'll get better results if you mix the red- or mahogany colour with the natural tint of the same colour. You'll have to use at least a quarter of the natural colour and three quarters of the red colour. The mixing ratio for the two colours will be 1:4. This will prevent the red colour from being way too bright on your light hair. Of course you can alter the mixing ratio to f.e. 1:1. That does make the colour less warm, so watch out for that. To make sure it's clear:
- mix the mahogany red brown (4.65) with the 3.0 or 4.0. The 3.0 will turn the colour darker and the 4.0 will turn the colour a less intense.
- mix the mahogany brown (5.5) with the 5.0 or 6.0 (lighter)
- mix the copper red light brown (6.64) with the 6.0 or the 7.0 (lighter)
- mix the copper light brown (6.4) with 6.0 or 7.0 (lighter)
- mix the copper dark blonde (7.4) with the 7.0 or 8.0 (lighter)
Hopefully you'll manage to pick the right colour for your hair! If you have any questions, you can always call us, chat with us or simply send an e-mail. We'd love to help you! You can also walk through our haircolour advice tool.
