I dyed my hair a bright red colour but now want to get it back to a medium brown shade

Hi,

I have dark brown Asian fine hair. I recently dyed it for the first time using L’Oréal’s Hilite in Magenta, my hair turned immediately to a Red Hot colour. It is a pretty bright red!

It's been about a week and a half and I've wanted to go medium brown/medium ash brown. I dyed my hair today with advice from Sally's Beauty Supply workers with 2/5 medium ash brown, 2/5 dark ash brown, 1/5 medium brown in 20 developer. The Colour is still red!

They're telling me to dye it with Clairol gray busters in light rich neutral brown which is supposed to make my hair a dark brown. Should I just get a dye like the hilites where it lifted colour also? What do I do??

Anon, America

In the UK we use different L'Oreal colours but I have been doing my homework on what you have told me. The red colour that you used was a hi-lift and deposit shade (designed for dark hair like yours) which means that it infuses itself very deeply into the hair shaft and is designed not to fade. Unfortunately it means that you can't get the hair lighter than the red but should be able to cover it. However you need to remove as much of the red as possible which means a visit to the salon. You need to tell the colourist what you used and if you can show them the boxes of the product as this can help them decide on what to do.

Ash shades like the ones you mention are great to neutralise red, but not artificial magenta red. They are designed to soften down natural red and orange tones that are exposed when dark haired people go lighter. 

Hope you get the colour you want!

John Clark at Brooks+Brooks, London