220. Red Hair Adventures - Hit or Miss

Hair can be quite unpredictable - a lot of the time. There are several factors that can affect the outcome of your hair color. Hormones, virgin, color treated hair, pre lightened, darkened. Etc. All can play a major role in the outcome of your hair and like many things in life; its not always 100% certain.

In my previous post I talked about using Hi-lift color dye to retouch my roots to avoid having to use bleach and then having to go through the process of washing my hair, drying it, THEN reapplying the color. Honestly, sometimes thats THE only way to get your hair the color you want. But I decided to take a gamble and use hi-lift color. L'oriel Hi-lift color for dark hair, to be precise.

I got L'oriel Hi-Color in H11 - Intense Red

which upon further inspection, I should have gone for the brighter shade of red fire, which is more orange base than violet base. Which Intense Red, looks more violet base and even on inspection of my own roots - it is more violet base even with red protein fillers.

I actually took a video on this to try it out and honestly, I have more respect for V-loggers and youtube gurus. You definitely need a  whole set up to do this properly and it was a challenge and excuse me for the shaky camera and ungodly close ups )':

but like I explained in the video as well in my previous post. I mixed the dye using vol.40 developer. And let it process for about 20 mins. I should have let it sit longer honestly but I was afraid my roots would process too quickly and it would come out an intense bright color. This is probably one of the mistakes I did.

And then after letting that sit for a few mins, I went and applied Ion 7IR (Intense Red Blonde) over the rest of my hair shaft using vol. 10 developer (I had the bottle left over from previous retouches and figured - why not?) - again a possible mistake but it worked out alright in the end lol as if I had used the hi-lift on the rest of my hair shaft, even on a lower developer. I'm afraid it would have turned darker than I had wanted.

Also, one thing to note about these Hi-lift colors - they will NOT work if you have dyed your hair DARKER. It only works on virgin dark hair.  Meaning, NO color has ever touched that part of the hair.



In the end, the roots on my crown turned decently ok. The rest of my roots - in the back where theres probably a good 2-3" maybe even 4" of regrowth just didn't cut it. Even when I started on the back first to give it extra time to process.

Lesson learned:

• Go 2 shades lighter than your actual color. I was trying to color match it exactly as I thought it was. But gotta remember, I'm not pre lightening my hair and redepositing color. 
• Let it sit and process a little longer. 
• I'll probably use the same color for the rest of my hair shaft- just using a lower volume so it really helps make everything as even as possible.

Conclusion: I will give L'oriel Hi-lift ONE more shot before I absolutely call it quits and say we weren't meant to be LOL. I've had my hair a nice fire-engine red color before - which, to be honest IS MUCH easier to match since its just ONE solid bright red. Than when you have a specific shade of red on your hair. As a working class person - I can't walk around the office with my crazy intense fire engine hair like I use to when I was younger lol....(which you can see my hair color time line of red here)

I hope you guys find this informative, let my "mistakes" be your guide xD