When lightening hair, the biggest fear is rinsing off the product, combing, drying and looking in the mirror to see a bright glowing carrot orange reflecting at you.
But orange is very much a misconception colour fail. With many people believing the product used has malfunctioned. In truth, orange is just a stage of colour lightening and not reactionary result.
Quick Orange Rescue!
When people obtain unwanted orange results from lightening and colouring, there is a tendency to react and attempt to immediately re-colour or re-bleach the hair. But it is always best to wait at least a week and check the condition and quality can withstand further treatment before lightening further.
However, playing a waiting game can be an inconceivable approach, if you have glowing warm hair and need to go to work, have appointments or carry on as usual. Therefore, the below quick tips should help give you a safe interim cover up :-
Mask and mute with a coloured or traditional dry shampoo
It’s not ideal, but if you need to immediately cover unwanted warmth, blasting the hair with a traditional powder dry shampoo will dull down gold tones. Whilst using a brunette or dark blonde dry shampoo can create immediate depth, producing a short-term warm light brown. Using this ‘dry shampoo’ approach every day for 7 days, will give you a more subdued shade that can be lightened to the desired level at a later stage.
Use a pastel pink to turn an unwanted orange into Rose Gold
An unwanted orange colour result can be adapted into a wearable shade. By simply applying a pastel pink semi-permanent colourant to either an orange, ginger, gold or copper base, a striking Rose Gold result can be obtained. Rose Gold (as a shade) is a combination of a red (pink) and gold. Therefore, by applying a pastel pink onto a gold or ginger base, you can turn a glowing orange into a striking Rose Gold.
Use a pastel lavender or lilac to go Dusky Light Brown
The blue pigments contained within lavender and lilac shades have a neutralisation effect on gold, whilst the red pigments (within any purple hued colour), combine with gold to create a Rose Gold (as outlined above). Therefore, if you apply a lavender or lilac Pastel colour onto an unwanted ‘lightened’ orange colour result, a Dusky Light Brown or Dark Rosé Blonde can be achieved. The colour may still have warm undertones, but this can be a safe solution for quickly counteracting an unwanted orange result using gentle products.
Camouflaging over an unwanted orange colour result is a great way to give the hair some time to rest and recover. If you then go back to re-lighten the hair, and lift away the remaining orange, you should find a pale result is achieved much faster than experienced originally. Remember, you are only needing to lift a few levels on this second occasion.
Lastly, remember hair can never lift to pure white. The actual colour of hair fibre is yellow, and you will still need to tone this yellow (once lightened) with a product such as Colour-Freedom White Blonde.
