I get a LOT of compliments on my spiffy green hair:
I also get asked by my friends, “did you just regreen it recently?” — when I haven’t. My hair stays nice and solid green for a good 4-6 weeks before I have to redye it.
As you can probably guess from my post about having long hair, I don’t really do things half-assedly, so when I started dying my hair, I started collecting all the various things one can do to help it stay bright and fresh.
Here’s my list of tips/tricks – I’ll do my best to update it if/when I add new things.
- I always bleach my hair first.
This is kind of a given, but even light-haired folks will benefit from it – the bleach opens up the cuticle of the hair. - After I put the dye in, I wrap my head in plastic wrap and leave it on overnight.
This keeps the dye from drying out and lets it have extra time to soak into my hair. I also put a black towel on my pillow. - When I rinse the dye out of my hair the next day, I use water as cold as I can stand.
I continue using as-cold-as-I-can-stand every day as well. - After that first rinse, I pour white vinegar over it, then rinse that out (again, with cold water).
This is like the vinegar soak you do when dying clothing, it helps close the cuticle of the hair back up with the dye inside. When I started doing this, it stopped my color leakage cold. I can sleep on my white-with-snowflakes sheets two days after dying my hair and there’s zero dye on the pillow! - I don’t use shampoo.
This is a habit I picked up when I was growing my hair long, and it’s serving me well even with short hair. I use a non-silicone-bearing conditioner (check the ingredients carefully, anything with “cone” at the end is a type of silicone, and those require detergent to get out of your hair – i.e., shampoo – so no product with ‘cone in it either) and that’s it. On the very rare occasions I feel the need to use shampoo, I use a really gentle, for-dyed-or-damaged-hair shampoo and don’t scrub at my hair much or at all.
This combo is working really well for me! Here’s a shot from when I was undergoing a medical trial and couldn’t redye my hair, so I had my stylist cut it into this awesome style. I believe when this photo was taken, I hadn’t dyed my hair in at least 8 weeks.
Dig that green, yo. Also dig my awesome cat.
NOTE: People and their hair vary, so I’m not saying everybody should do all of these. It’s just what’s working for me. Experiment and find out what works for you!
Got a tip for keeping dyed hair looking fresh? Leave it in the comments! I’m always looking for new tricks to try.
