Goodbye Green (Part 1/?)

Sooooooo, here we are again. We're going to ignore that it has only been a couple of hours since my last post. This is what productivity looks like!

Well here I am, typing. Talking at imaginary people that may or may not exist. Did I still write a blog if there is no-one around to read it? (If you exist, feel free to leave a comment and save me from my many existential crisiseses..es... problems)

On my introductory post, I pointed out that my hair through virtue of me adding some lovely shades of purple had picked up some unwelcome green and blue shades. You can see what I mean here.

Now green is a problem colour. It does not tend to go away on it's own, it likes to hang around forever. And I have SO many nice dyes that I want to show you, which can't be fully appreciated until I can put them on a nice, reasonably even base.

It's problem fixing time.


Now when you google 'Remove green shades from hair' you see a LOT of frustrated people debating the pro's and con's of various removal techniques. Clarifying shampoos, Vit C baths, Bicarbonate of Soda baths, Direct Dye removers, Bleach baths, Just dye over the hecking thing... the list appears to be endless.

Obviously, no two peoples hairs are the same. Things like the dye you used, the condition of your hair, how well your hair lifts naturally will all have an effect on what method works best for you.

But I wanted to work through the list to find out what works best for me. And on careful consideration, for a variety of very good reasons (my green is quite light to begin with, it has limited capacity for causing damage and its CHEAP) I have decided to start with Vitamin C.

This is my hair before:

Side note, I am not a good photographer. I am not all that photogenic. None of the photos on this blog will have been filtered in anyway, and I will do my best to show the shades in a variety of different lights. In this great example of my bad photography, we have indirect natural light, and literal god-awful artifical lighting. In which the green hasn't really shown up. But it IS there.

With that out of the way, lets begin.

You will need:

• Vitamin C tablets, a good few. (I bought mine cheap at savers)
• The energy to crush these tablets. A pestle and mortar will help, but a teaspoon will do.
• A fairly big tub
• A nice shampoo. You might choose to use a clarifying shampoo and boost the fading power, but I wanted a realistic idea of what vit C does on its own and I wanted to limit any damage. Today I am using : Tigi Colour Goddess Oil Infused Shampoo
• A shower cap, or cling film
• A deep conditioner. Today I am using : 3 minute colour miracle by Aussie
• A haircrush (tangleteezer all the way, though its not technically needed for this you should just have one anyway!), sectioning clips, gloves or a  dye brush (not really needed I just have sensitive skin so it's a precautionary measure) 
• A good couple of hours
• Realistic expectations - this may not take out all the green. It may not work at all - even if it works for me, it may not work for you!

The actual process itself is really simple - crush up the tablets as fine as you possibly can, and mix in with plenty of shampoo. Wet hair, section off and apply only to sections that you are looking to fade. Apply liberally - make sure its really saturated! Wrap with cling film and leave for between 30 minutes to an hour. I washed mine out after 45 minutes!

Rinse thoroughly, with hot water. The hot water makes sure your taking as much of the colour out in one go as you can. Apply your deep conditioning mask and leave on for as long as you can - I'm leaving mine on for half an hour, pffft 3 minutes. Rinse with warm, and then cold water to help with shiney-ness. Style as normal (but if you can give your hair a break from heat tools, I'm sure it would be grateful)

Results:

P.S : I will add another photo in daylight - this is under harsh artifical lighting!

Thoughts:

Well. By far the hardest bit of this was crushing up the Vit C tablets - I even cracked one of my hair dye bowls with the pressure I was applying! You can buy vit c powder, so even if it is a little more expensive I would recommend going with that option if your lazy.

I chose the Tigi Colour goddess shampoo because I knew it was very nourishing, and also because it smells like toffee. With the vit C mixed in, I did smell like a toffee apple and honestly I was feeling it.

When I first put the mixture in, it was really frothy and didn't drip at all, but at the end of the 45 minutes I was leaking water everywhere - that was quite strange. It was also rather tingly - but not in an unpleasant way. When I washed it out I could literally see all this murky greeny yellow colour rinsing away too - it gave me a very good feeling about the results!

However, as I was starting to dry I could still see it was green tinged. More than that, it has removed the toning purple from the roots and mid ends, and now my whole head is a fairly even light mint greeny blonde - this is a quirk of the dyes I've used in the past, I don't think this is the vit C's fault. I'm back to blonde in parts at the front, but I am still rather green at the back.


My hair feels maybe a tiny bit dry, but certainly no lasting damage. I wouldn't do it every day, but it wont hurt every once in a while!

Overall, I don't think I am done with this method. It certainly has lightened, it wasn't that tedious and it wasn't overly damaging. I think if you were trying to fade a more vibrant green (EG crazy colours Peacock blue for example - that was a bitch to get out even at the salon) you would get a more dramatic result. I may come back to this but for now, my quest continues...

Georgie x