Help pleasee, I'm 17 and naturally have darkdarkdark! Brown hair, I used to highlight it but stopped when I was about 14 and started to dye my hair darker and darker. Now its basically black! But I've always been a fan of light hair and I'm dying for a change, my hairdresser refuses to lighten my hair and insists that I let it grow out, but that ridiculous seeming my hair is down past my boobs and would take years if I were to "grow it out".

Help help help please I really want ways to lighten my hair so my hairdresser will finally dye it lighter. Thank you if you reply :)

You can use ion color corrector from the beauty supply stores, but you have to wait a week or 2 before dying it again or it just goes back to dark. Its safer for your hair then bleaching because it just strips the dye. But you can also bleach it from home using the powder blue packets and level 20 developer. But keep close watch on it as to not fry your hair!

Sorry, but that's simply not true. The way color correctors / color removers work is that it chemically *reduces* the artificial hair dye. You have to wash the dye out. If you don't wash it all out, the oxygen in the air (or developer in a dye) will *re-oxidize* it and the dye will return to the dark color it started with (i.e. the hair turns dark -- maybe not as dark as it was originally, but still darker than you want).

Color removers come with a "final lotion" (or some other name) that is just a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide. You apply the lotion to the hair. If it turns dark (if the artificial pigment is re-oxidized), you haven't gotten all of the artificial pigment out. You need to apply the color remover again to try to get the rest of it out. Many people don't understand the purpose of this "final lotion," and some people say, "don't use it, it'll just turn your hair dark again." Unfortunately, that's what happens when you don't understand the chemistry of the situation.

The key here is to wash the bejeebers out of your hair after using color remover. Then make sure it's gone by using the lotion. If you don't have the lotion, or if you don't know what it is, buy 10-volume peroxide at the beauty supply store and use that as an "almost final rinse." If the hair doesn't turn dark in 10 minutes, rinse everything out with cool water and you're good to go.

Note that there are bleach-based color removers (Color Zap, for instance) that work differently than this. Bleach-based color removers can be recognized by looking for "persulfates" on the ingredient list.

Great answer. What about the Formaldahyde that is in the Ion color remover. Isn't this ingredient harmful to your health if inhaled and overused or misused?