Image courtesy of antpkr at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I believe we have all been in hair limbo while we are waiting for a pesky hard to remove color to fade or grow out. For me it was bright red, which was so much fun at the time but I got tired of the upkeep, the constant glazes, the red color depositing shampoos/conditioners, cold showers, and the ever pink pillows.
Well I did not want to use a color remover to get out the red for two reasons. First off it is super damaging to your hair, and second my last experience with a hair color remover left me looking like a blotchy cheetah and I had to go pay a salon to fix my messed up mane. So this time I just let it fade a bit and put a dark ash brown over it. I chose an ash color because cool ash tones typically neutralize warmer red tones.
This color was nice for a couple months, but I have been wanting to go back to my natural light brown hair color and eventually get back to the blonde I had before I went red. I ended up stumbling across a pin on pintrest about a DIY vitamin C hair treatment that supposedly removed unwanted hair color naturally without damaging your hair. Well this had me intrigued so after reading a few more articles and watching several youtube videos I decided to give it a go!
Now through all my research no one seemed to have an exact recipe. The main ingredient you need is, drumroll please.... Vitamin C. If you can find it in a powder form that would be best, I didnt really want to use the "EmergenC" packets some youtubers used, the flavors and stuff threw me off. I opted to use just regular Vitamin C with rose hips tablets. I got a bottle of 100 from Walmart for around $4.
Well I did not want to use a color remover to get out the red for two reasons. First off it is super damaging to your hair, and second my last experience with a hair color remover left me looking like a blotchy cheetah and I had to go pay a salon to fix my messed up mane. So this time I just let it fade a bit and put a dark ash brown over it. I chose an ash color because cool ash tones typically neutralize warmer red tones.
This color was nice for a couple months, but I have been wanting to go back to my natural light brown hair color and eventually get back to the blonde I had before I went red. I ended up stumbling across a pin on pintrest about a DIY vitamin C hair treatment that supposedly removed unwanted hair color naturally without damaging your hair. Well this had me intrigued so after reading a few more articles and watching several youtube videos I decided to give it a go!
Now through all my research no one seemed to have an exact recipe. The main ingredient you need is, drumroll please.... Vitamin C. If you can find it in a powder form that would be best, I didnt really want to use the "EmergenC" packets some youtubers used, the flavors and stuff threw me off. I opted to use just regular Vitamin C with rose hips tablets. I got a bottle of 100 from Walmart for around $4.
Image courtesy of boulemonademoon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I used my mortar and pestle to crush up the pills to as fine of a powder possible. The amount of pills people used ranged from 10 to 30. The first time I tried it I only used 10 pills and only saw a very slight change so a couple days later I tried again and Used 35 pills. I have really thick hair that is past my shoulders so depending on your hair thickness and length you may not need that many. The beauty of this simple recipe is that you kind of just have to wing it and personalize it to what works for you.
So once you crush your pills (or are lucky enough to find a powder version) you put the powder into a small mixing bowl. Then you have 3 options of what you can mix it with. The most gentle being a super moisturizing shampoo. The strongest to really get the more tough colors out would be the blue dawn dish soap. I chose the middle ground of Head and Shoulders shampoo which apparently fades hair color. You just put enough shampoo or soap in to cover the top over the powder and create a pudding-like consistency.
So once you crush your pills (or are lucky enough to find a powder version) you put the powder into a small mixing bowl. Then you have 3 options of what you can mix it with. The most gentle being a super moisturizing shampoo. The strongest to really get the more tough colors out would be the blue dawn dish soap. I chose the middle ground of Head and Shoulders shampoo which apparently fades hair color. You just put enough shampoo or soap in to cover the top over the powder and create a pudding-like consistency.
Now this does not stain so you can wear what ever you like but I suggest putting a towel down because it does get messy. You apply to towel dried hair or you can do what I did and just spray your hair with a water bottle. You cover your hair entirely with it (if you had to crush pills like me it may be a bit crumby) and then put your hair in a plastic bag and leave it one anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. The first time I did it for only 45 minutes. When I did it a couple days later I kept it on for 2 hours and got far better results.
Keep in mind some people said the mixture can make your scalp burn a little, i must not have a sensitive scalp because it did not bug me at all. and it really did take all the artificial hair color out of my hair and left me with my natural light brown hair and did not seem to damage it in the slightest. Now looking at my picture above and ignoring the horrible lighting, bad picture quality, and frizzy hair you can really see the difference. So everyone's hair is different and results may vary but if you are in hair limbo like I was it is definitely worth a shot to try it before using any harsh color removers!
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