Hi my name is Stacy,
I recently ran into a little trouble with hair color and ended up with blackhair and I am naturally light blonde. Although I got used to the color and like it it is hard to keep up and with summer coming I need to get it back. Problem is that I have so many chemicals on it that when I try to do a lighter shade it turns a red color on my roots. I'm getting ready to ccolor it a light brown tomorrow from dark, dark brown.? Want to know how to not get the red results and get blonde or a just a natural look.

My suggestion would be to get a color stripping product to help remove the unwanted dark color.

Then use bleach to put lighter tips through your hair with a tipping cap... keep adding them until you reach your desired color.

"Color won't lighten color" is a phrase that you hear (or say) every other week if you're a haircolorist. Artificial pigment from haircolors doesn't act like natural pigment when you try to lighten it. First of all, the peroxide in ordinary haircoloring develops the color (causes it to deposit in the hair). There's no reason to believe that it will take it out -- and it won't. Second, some people try to bleach it out. Bleach doesn't turn all things white. In fact, bleach (either peroxide bleaches or chlorine bleaches) often turns things yellow. If you wish to color your hair lighter, you must use color remover, first!

If you're going to try to color it from a dark, dark brown, you're almost surely going to fail, even if you only want to go a little lighter. You'll either end up (if you're lucky) with orange hair or you'll see little change at all. If you're not lucky, you'll end up with hair that breaks off.

There are two common types of color remover. One is a glorified bleach (L'Oreal Effasol is the one most commonly used in salons). It's pretty bad. It usually ends up drying out the hair and leaving it in bad shape. Nowadays, it's much more common to use one of the sulfur-based color removers (ColorFix, Color Zap, Color Oops, Color Charm Color Corrector, Igora Phantom, Modulat). These products "undevelop" the color molecules and they can be washed out. It leaves the hair in much better shape than bleaches (and don't forget about what I said about bleaches only bleaching to orange or yellow).

If you haven't already tried to bleach out the color, you should use one of the sulfur-based color removers. You'll probably need at least two applications of the product. After that, you can try to bleach the remaining pigment (naural pigment and possibly some traces of artificial pigment), and recolor to the color you want.

If you have already tried to bleach (using hair bleach -- not just a hair coloring), you probably will not be able to get the color past orange without breaking the hair off -- and sulfur-based color removers will probably not work if you've tried bleach.

Recommended sites:

Bottle Blondes Board (http://www.network54.com/Forum/503669/)

The Going Blonde Message Board (http://www.network54.com/Forum/127834/)