I've said it over and over and over... They should NOT be selling hair color over the counter. Hair stylists are trained in how to use these chemicals. YES PEOPLE! CHEMICALS! People coming in with black dyed hair wanting to be blond had better be prepared spend a lot of money doing so.
Let's just get into it. All hair color goes through the same stages of lightening. But not always at the same speed depending on the density of the hair and the amount of melanin (color molecules) in the hair. Artificial dye molecules are even harder to break. Here is how it breaks down..(for my hairstylist friends.. yes, I know there are more the 10 here... I wanted to demonstrate how gradual the transitions can be)
Let's get this straight right here... COLOR IS NOT OPAQUE!!! What is actually happening in your hair shaft when you color your hair is that the color molecules are being fiddled with. So once you color your hair... your natural color is GONE! Other molecules and chemicals have gone in there and beat your molecules up. Pulverized them! And replaced them with stronger angrier and tougher molecules. Now let's get back to the lightening issue...
Developer... aka. Peroxide. It comes in 5 volume, 10 volume, 20 volume, 30 volume, 40 volume, and I've seen it in flesh searing 50 volume for people with the skin toughness of a rhino. I'm going to try to dumb this down as much as possible. No offense. The volume or strength of each is related to how much lift, as we call it, that developer provides. So where a 5 and 10 volume are for semi-permanent and deposit only color a 20, 30, and 40 will create more lightening. 20 volume - one level of lightening. 30 = 2 levels and 40 - 3 levels. (you can achieve more levels of lift depending on what you are mixing with) That's the nutshell explanation.
Generally when you buy box color it comes with 20 volume. AND color won't lift color. So lets say you dyed your hair black a few months ago and you want to go blond. Your natural color is medium brown. So you go to your pharmacy and buy a box with a beautiful blond model on it and go home.. You squirt the crap on and wait. When you wash your hair your ends are still black or maybe slightly lighter but your roots where your natural was is what now? Orange! yup. 20 volume. You see why over the counter color is bad!!! This is much more complicated then you can possibly imagine. I didn't even touch on what undertones are or how porosity can affect results.
So what is actually happening in there then? The color molecules don't actually wash away when your hair is bleached. They are being dissolved. They break down smaller and smaller and smaller until more and more light passes through them and as a result we see blond. Darker pigment reflects light. There will normally be a slight to moderate yellowish tinge to hair because of this. This is combated with toners which are WHOLE other story but basically put another pastel color over the hair to neutralize that color a bit. But that, my friends, is for a future post...
So please, don't try this at home!
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