I’ve dyed my hair at home a countless number of times. Each time I do it, I swear I am not going to do it again. Then I get my hair colored at the salon and lament being $85 – $100 poorer. Then I resort to coloring my hair at home again.
Why is coloring one’s hair at home a bad idea, you ask? Well, I’ve never had a colortastrophe – ended up with green hair or anything crazy. It’s just, well, a very messy process. I usually end up ruining at least one shirt and one towel and dying various spots around the bathroom orange – the toilet handle, random spots on the floor, maybe a even a spot or two on the ceiling. How does this happen? Who knows?! I am always super careful. But I ALWAYS make a mess, and our bathroom is not the same after as it was before.
Anyway, despite my best advice, I colored my hair at home a few weeks ago. I decided to use a semi-permanent color, in the hopes that the outgrowth would be more natural. Specifically, I used Clairol Natural Instincts #28 Dark Brown, aka “Nutmeg.” The color started out almost black, which I am OK with, quickly faded to a perfect shade of cinnamony brown, and then my lighter roots started to peep out.
Fortunately, Clairol was thinking ahead and provided a “Week 2 Color Fresh!” packet (exclamation theirs). It’s essentially dye mixed with conditioner. Two weeks after you initially color, you are supposed to wash your hair and then douse your head with this gross looking brown pudding for 5-10 minutes to “refresh” your color.
It didn’t so much refresh my color as refresh the bathroom with a whole new array of orange stains. They are everywhere – shower curtain, towel, shower walls, shower drain, my hands, and my scalp skin. Or should I just say scalp? Do I have to specify “skin” when talking about my scalp? Who knows. Who cares, I guess. Anyway, the refresh packet dyed pretty much everything within a 3 foot radius orange. My head looks a little weird. I’m hoping that a good hair washing will return it to a fair normal.
Needless to say, while I might use Natural Instincts again, I will toss the Color Fresh! packet. Oh, I almost forgot. It also makes your hair smell a little funny – almost as funny as when I rinsed my hair with apple cider vinegar and didn’t wash it afterwards. My hair did not smell good. At all. It smelled a little…spoiled. And not spoiled like pampered, spoiled like gone bad.
I’ll probably resort to getting my hair professionally colored next time. I want to get some super dark purple lowlights – just a few random, almost imperceptible pieces. I can’t do that at home, so I best go to a professional. I work for a bank holding company, so I can’t do anything too crazy, but I want to do something that breaks up the monochromatic brown-ness of my head.
