Reverse Dip Dying!

A few days ago my best friend B asked if I would attempt to reverse dip dye her hair. Despite having no experience with colouring hair, apart from my own dodgy DIY attempts when I was 14, I agreed. We decided to go for a semi-permanent colour as I wasn't totally comfortable with the thought of destroying her hair with permanent dye! 


We chose to use this dye by Clairol because A. it has the word 'easy' in the name ;) and B. it was the only semi-permanent dye they had in Tesco... 

Before we began B had bleach blond hair and wanted the top to be a dark brown, fading into the blond at the bottom. 


We stared by separating the hair into two sections - the top section to be dyed brown, and the bottom section to have some brown added at the roots and down into the blond to give a gradient effect.

I then mixed the dye, put on the gloves and we were ready! I put the majority of the bottle on the top section of hair and massaged it in, making sure it covered all the hair right to the roots. 

I then put some dye on the roots of the bottom section of hair and dragged my fingers through the hair from roots to tips, to avoid the colour looking too 'blocky'. 

The instructions said to leave the dye on for no more than 15 minutes, but B didn't want the brown to be too dark, so we only left it on for 10.

AAAND RINSE!

I then shampooed B's hair making sure that the water ran clear, with no dye left in her hair whatsoever. Then massaged in the conditioner provided and left it again for 5 minutes.

Another final rinse and a blow dry later we were left with this!

I'm actually so pleased with how it turned out! Though I could have perhaps added a bit more brown into the bottom section, so there would be less blond showing through. After a couple of washes the brown fades slightly which makes it look more natural. 

I wouldn't attempt this alone, it was fairly tricky with two of us, plus our friend Terry who popped round half way through... It was quite handy to have another extra body I could shout at to pass me things and to take a few photos for the blog :)

GOOD LUCK! xo