Do you have any horror stories about dyeing your hair at home?

Oh hell yes. Last year the boyfriend wanted me to dye my hair black. I’m a brunette. I’ve got dark eyes and an olive tone skin, so I thought it’d be okay. I HATED IT. Loathed. Then my hair kinda started thinning, bad. Then I tried dying it back to light, yeah well my roots turned orange.

Since then, I still dye my hair, but if I do anything OTHER than brown, I won’t do it at my house, or myself. I’ll go and spend the money to get it done right

My pre-teen daughter wanted to die her hair from light brown to red. I dye my own hair all the time, so I figured “why not”. She picked a deep shade of red, and we got to work. It came out bright flame red. Like day-glo red. Since she liked being different anyway, she decided to keep it for a while… against all advice to the contrary. After a few weeks, she decided she’d had enough of being that different, and we died it back. Her hair itself was no worse for the wear.

I was 17 and needed something to do.

Oh, how boredom can cause very bad things! I decided, on rainy Sunday afternoon, to color my hair! Woohoo! I decided to color my light brown, with blond streaks (all natural), auburn. Thinking that the blond would lend nice “streaks” to my hair, like I had my hair done at the salon, I went for it! What I didn’t think about was reading the box, again. I had mistakenly picked up a different shade, not the one I intended.

After following all the directions, still not thinking there could be a problem with the color, I continued along. I flipped my hair, after towel drying and looked in the mirror. Something wasn’t right, but I thought that it was because my hair was still wet.

I dried my hair, eggplant. My hair was eggplant, with some lighter version of eggplant mixing in with the darker eggplant.

My mother walked in – yes, I did this against her advice – I thought she was going to faint. She was very used to her sunny, preppy daughter of the 80’s. Now she had pre-goth girl!

About a month and a half and my mom couldn’t take it anymore. She made an appointment, had my hair colored back to normal and reminded me when I was 18, I could make my own decisions.

I’m ginger and tried to dye my hair a lovely deep red once…not too long ago…couple of years…it went maroon… i suddenly realised how much i loved my ginger hair and how much it made me feel “me”.

edit: and yes it was permanent…but i did manage to sort it out a few months later by having highlights put in and that lifted the colour a lot it was quite amazing what a good job she did in getting it back to its original colour!

removed by me

I used to use henna but I wanted something more intense and different once, several years ago. So I put black semi-permanent dye on top of the henna and the whole thing came out a forest green color. It would have been better if I hadn’t been working at a bank at the time.

I have blonde hair, but when I was 17 I wanted it platinum blonde. I had done it before without any problems, but I guess this time had been one too many. I was blow drying my hair when I noticed clumps braking off on the back of my head. I cherish my long hair and was mortified by what was happening.

My best friend came over to try and fix it by trimming it, but only made it worse. I eventually had to get my long locks cut so short, it was almost as short as ^^Buster’s^^.

I have remained a natural blonde since that day.

Not me personally, but when I was in high school my best friend decided to dye her hair blue. Well, she got in the shower to rinse, and apparently, blue dye is very strong because she ended up with a slight blur tint all over her body, and it lasted about a week. Her hands were even a deeper blue from running them through her hair. I never let her live it down.

I have fixed many home hair dye disasters. We hairstylists thank box color for bringing us so much buisiness.
If done correctly, home hair color can be safe. You should never attempt to go blonde on your own. People think hair dye is like paint, the color on the box = the final outcome on your head. No.

Yes, but the colouring-part turned out ok…
The problem was slipping in the shower and breaking the glass shower-wall with my head…

@elijahsuicide – trying to convince a stubborn 17yr old that fact is a little difficult, though! :)

@cak you are absolutely correct !

@elijahsuicide I also work in a salon… Color Corrections can be verrry profitable…Thanks Clairol. There is sooo much more to picking a color for someone’s hair than looking at a box and thinking it looks good on the model, so it will look good on you!

I’ve been dying my hair for quite some time and I have had minimal problems. I usually get my hair cut and thinned, then I dye my hair later at home. My hair prior to ever being cut will be thick and curly so I need 2 boxes of hair dye. I was debating if I should get my hair cut or I’d be safe with using just one box. After dying then styling my hair that night I learned that I should’ve used two boxes. My hair had light spots and dark spots :[

How about this: I bleached my hair AND my brows hoping to just lighten them a bit (used a bleach meant to lighten brows and body hair for both) Hair looked good, eyebrows became almost invisible. So I had to go to a 24-hr drugstore at 11:30 at night with a baseball cap pulled down low, I looked like a robber. I then bought some “copper Penny” red hair color. Was a cool effect. Though I kinda resembled a lit match.

I have naturally dark brown hair and one day i (stupidly) decided to dye it black. So i got my PERMANENT dye and spread it all over my head. It was not my first time dying my hair, i usually had dark purples which i much prefer.
So the minute i got out the shower and dried my hair i was horrified. I hated the black, extremely.
So the very next day i went to the hairdresser and she made me wait a few days before she did anything. She bleached about 6 sections of my hair blonde under my hair so it would make my hair look ‘browner’. .
When i got home my hair looked so bogan i decided to cut the blonde out.

So now i am still living with the stupid dye (and short bits from cutting it) but luckily it has faded a fair bit. Now i wait for it to grow out. :P
Anyone have any idea how long it would take my hair (that grows fairly fast and is shoulder-length) to grow out??

:) Thanks, xox

No actually not. I’ve been dying my hair red at home and people have thought that I’ve had it done professionally. I guess it just depends on what you use and how you do it.