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My hair has been red (this time round) since Summer 2016 when my mate dyed it for me. I have been thinking about dying my hair brown again for a few months now; the main reason was to get it healthy again. Due to excessive dying/bleaching, my hair is not in the best condition, even though it should technically be a lot worse. But because I use a shit-ton of coconut oil, conditioner and various other products it hasn’t fallen out (yet….).
It’s been very dry and itching a lot since November last year; I’ve been using loads of Aloe Vera and coconut oil and a Shea Butter leave-in conditioner, but it got to the point where I couldn’t stand it. The day before I dyed it brown I was brushing it and it was the last straw; my hair literally felt like straw. It was awful and I was like ‘right, this red has to go.’
I could have just left it and let it grow out on its own, but that would take like a year and my hair would fade to some gross ginger-blonde colour that would not suit me at all. When you have red hair you have to dye it continuously (for me usually every two months) in order to maintain the colour, and because my hair is dark now I don’t have to do that, I can literally just leave it for a year or so in order for it to get healthy again. I did that back in 2015, when my mate dyed my hair from pink to dark brown and it got in pretty good condition.
To nourish your hair you want to use loads of conditioner and products that will involve wetting it a lot, and if you continuously rinse your hair when its red the colour runs out faster.
I wanted my hair a dark chocolate brown but I deliberately chose a darker shade to what I want so my hair currently looks black. This is because I’ve dyed it on top of red hair, it will fade naturally to the brown shade I want. If I’d have picked the colour I want it would end up being too light. When you first dye your hair, it’s usually darker than what you expect, but once it dries and you’ve washed it a few times it tends to lighten.
I’ve also just been a bit sick of red; I love red hair so much, don’t get me wrong it’s my favourite hair colour on me, but I’ve had it for almost two years now and fancied a change up. I probably will come back to it in another year or two — red hair for me is like an old boyfriend one might constantly go back to. (e.g. Carrie and Big, for all you Sex and the City fans). But yeah, whilst I love red hair, it gets a bit tiresome with the fading and the having to bleach the roots. It’s nice to have my hair one colour that doesn’t attract so much attention – of course it’s lovely having people compliment my hair a lot but I do want something a bit more inconspicuous for now.
I used Schwartzkopf Bittersweet Chocolate — Schwartzkopf and Crazy Colour are my two favourite hair-colouring brands. Funnily enough, while dying it yesterday I used two packs but ran out and ended up needing another one, and had to go down to Savers with my hair half dyed black and parts still red and smelling AWFUL (I hadn’t rinsed out the dye yet). Fortunately there’s a Savers a minute from my house and I told the shopkeeper I was right in the process of dying it but I’d run out of dye. No one really said anything; it wasn’t as embarrassing as I’d thought it would be.
