Hair dye: which is worst?

jules

I have light brown hair that I would like to dye myself with some regular drugstore products. I was just wondering which if dyeing my hair blonde would be more damaging to my hair than dying it brown? I want to do the minimum damage possible. Would it be better to dye it with a semi-permanent?
Any help/advice on this would be great!

Anne

I've heard many times that if you want to go more than 3 shades lighter or darker to have it professionally colored. I color my hair with LOreal Feria, but its just to cover the gray, not change the color.

jules

Really? I didn't know that...
I think I'm going to dye my hair dark brown because I read somewhere that dyeing it blonde means that you have to strip the hair of melanin or something and i really don't want to damage my hair too much (i'm assuming that stripping the hair of melanin would make it the hair shaft weaker)...is melanin important for the hair?

Janis

The way hair most hair dyes work is the following: they soak the hair with an alkaline solution (the opposite of acidic solutions in chemical terms, and just as caustic -- lye and Nair are strong alkaline materials). the hair shaft swells up in the presence of alkaline materials, which causes the overlapping scales, the cuticle, covering the outside of the shaft to curl upward like scales on a pissed-off hedgehog.

This allows the dye molecules to work their way in past the cuticle scales and soak into the core of the hair shaft. The hair is then coated with a material (possibly acidic, but I'm not sure) that causes the cuticle scales to lie back down again and trap the dye molecules in the hairshaft.

Theoretically, anyhow. In practice, the alkaline material used to swell the hairshaft also damages it (it's used in depilatories, it's just stronger and left on longer, and it dissolves hair) and the cuticle scales never flatten back to how they were before. As a result, after dying your hair, it's rougher and somewhat damaged. Some people's hair can tolerate it better than others.

And if your hair is dark naturally, then in order to dye it, you must first swell the hair shaft and nuke the pigment that's already in the core of the hair (this is melanin, it's what makes dark hair and dark skin dark). That's double-process -- you swell the hair shaft with somewhat nasty alkaline chemicals, send bleach into the core of the hair to get rid of the pigment that's already there, deposit new pigment, and de-swell the hair to get the cuticle scales to lie mostly flat again.

And again, this process is inherently damaging to hair and will leave it, to some extent, weaker and rougher than it was -- which some types of hair can tolerate better than others.

It's complicated by the fact that the cooler, blue-tinted dye molecules are inherently smaller than the reddish, warm-tinted dye molecules. When you bleach your hair, the cool tones get nuked first and most easily, which is why bleached hair can have a lot of brassy red left in it. Also, when you dye your hair, the cooler tint pigment molecules will also prove to be more prone to rinse out and fade away, which is why people use purple-toned toner shampoo to keep depositing a low level of cool tint time and again.

lilia

Melanin is the name for the color molecules. When you lighten the hair you remove these molecules and when you dye the hair you are adding pigment to the hair shaft. You cannot semi-permanently lighten the hair, once you remove the melanin it's gone - even if you dye it back you are adding pigment, not natural melanin. As Janis wrote, lightening hair to blond is more damaging than putting a darker color on - The more levels you lift the more damage you cause. Semi-permanent dyes use a lower volume of developer (the "engine" that drives the color) so the color molecules can't penetrate as deep and therefore wash out of the hair quicker. Most Permanent boxed color comes with 20 volume, which is generally to strong if you are only looking to deposit (they put it in there because most people underestimate how dark their hair is and need the lifting power and also for those who are covering grey and need the extra power to cover resistant grey).
If you are going darker you should find a Sally's or other beauty supply that sells color and get 10 volume for permanent, or 5 to 9 volume for semi-perm. I wouldn't recommend going lighter at home - too many people end up orange with box color. If cost is an issue find a beauty school where at least they have some training and supervision.Good Luck

Janis

Also, if you want dark brown and you don't anticipate wanting to change it back henna and indigo is a good way to get it without the nastier chemicals that are used in hair dye to open and deposit pigment in the core of the hair. Henna and indigo dye molecules just stain the outside of the hair shaft; no lifting of the cuticle required. (I say "just," but keep in mind that henna nd indigo should be considered permanent-permanent.)

hennaforhair.com is a good resource, but again, it's not the sort of thing you can get out with colorfix. It's for good. You can get a very nice brunette out of it, though -- with just about zero damage to your hair since again, it's simply staining the outside of your hair instead of depositing pigment into the core.

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