Trying something new

Opinion

Julia Rouillard

Website Editor

A few months ago I got tired of my hair after trying to dye it black and burgundy with box dye. After that I wanted to go red. Wanting to go red is a bold choice but it was trending on TikTok and it looked really nice on other people so I wanted to try it myself. Being too scared to bleach my own hair and not being able to afford getting it done professionally I decided to use L’Oreal HiColor Red HiLights in Magenta. This dye is for brown hair specifically and is meant to be mixed with a developer. Using the color remover, dye, and developer the total was $30. So not that bad for doing my whole head at home. On the box it says the ratio for  the developer to dye. 

The consistency was really creamy and easy to apply. For longer hair you’d need to buy a couple of bottles. I used three for my medium length kind of normal hair. This would be better for people with virgin hair since you can’t put color on top of color. If you do you have to use a color remover, I used color oops because it didn’t smell that bad compared to others. For the process I put it all over my ends and my roots last for better results. The smell was similar to a normal box dye so kind of bad but not really. 

When everything had settled in for about 30 minutes I washed it out. For the first wash it’s hard to tell when to stop since it’s a semi permanent dye the color keeps on running. When I got out the results weren’t as great as I thought they’d be as it was a little patchy. I think it came out that way because I didn’t leave the color remover in as long as it was supposed to or I need more of the product in my hair. The only negative is how messy it is but that is a given with red dye. It also stains very easily even after you’re done with it. I’ve stained towels, shirts and sheets but putting it in the wash always helps. Overall it was a fun experience to dye my hair red at home and it took about 1 month and a half for it to start to fade. I recommend it to anyone who would like to dye their hair at home with no bleach.