Blonde hair is known for its beautiful, light, and airy appearance. However, if you’ve recently dyed your hair blonde and noticed unwanted red tones, don’t worry!
There are simple and effective ways to remove red tones from your blonde hair without visiting a salon.
Learning how to remove red tones from blonde hair will help you considerably when making drastic hair color switches in the future.
Tips For Removing Red Tones from Blonde Hair
Preparing your hair and using solutions to strip it of pigment are best when looking to eliminate red undertones. All the methods below can help you with this.
1. Do a Clarifying Wash
Before heading to the salon, apply a sulfate-heavy clarifying shampoo to dry hair and leave it to sit for 10 minutes before you wash it out. This will help get rid of product buildup, mineral buildup, and color.
It won’t fully strip your hair color, but it will help break down a lot of that red pigment in your cuticles and make it easier to cover up when you or your stylist apply another shade on top.
Clarifying shampoos can also help if your stylist has already done the work but there are still red undertones in your new blonde look.
Blonde is already very light, so it’s a hard color to strip if you use a clarifying product. Red, on the other hand, can be faded.
When it fades it often turns into a warm blonde color that will blend in with the rest of your new look.
If you’re going for an ashy blonde shade, then you might have to be warm for a few weeks after the red fades out until you can have your ashy blonde treatment completed.
2. Use a Green Toner
When choosing a stylist, ask them if they have green toner they can use when mixing up your hair dye.
If you take a look at a color wheel, you’ll find green sits on the opposite side to red. This means green tones will cancel out red ones, so blonde will go down on top without the red showing through.
If coloring your hair at home, then opt for a green toner when selecting your products.
However, if your red has faded to a more orange shade, then you should opt for a purple or blue toner instead.
Knowing which colors neutralize other tones is key when learning how to remove red tones from blonde hair.
3. Use Toning Shampoo or Conditioner
Sometimes using toner while creating your color can help considerably, but it won’t always remove red tones from blonde hair completely.
In these instances, you should use toning shampoo and conditioner. Remember, use green toner when trying to get rid of red.
Leave the shampoo, and then the conditioner, on for two or three minutes before you rinse them out.
It would be a good idea to do this toning treatment the last time you wash your hair before your dye session to go blonde. Then, use the toning shampoo and conditioner for the first wash after your dye job.
4. Utilize Some Baking Soda
Baking soda works wonders for a variety of things. It’s a strong alkaline substance so it’s often used to clean and strip unwanted chemicals on a variety of objects.
It also works to strip pigment out of your hair follicles.
Create a solution of equal parts warm water and baking soda. This should form a paste when stirred.
Apply it to your hair everywhere there’s a red tone you wish to remove, and leave it in for 15 minutes.
Rinse thoroughly to ensure you get all of it out, as it’s damaging if left in too long. This will dry your hair out, so condition it generously when you’re done.
5. Grab Some Vitamin C
If you have any vitamin C tablets lying around, then you can use them the same way as baking soda.
Crush them up into a powder and add water to create a paste. Then, follow the steps above that you’d follow if you were using baking soda.
6. Go Dark Before Going Blonde
As red is so difficult to cover up with light shades, you may temporarily want to dye your hair a darker color such as brown.
You don’t have to go too dark, but make sure it’s dark enough to hide the red. It’s a pricey but effective solution when figuring out how to remove red undertones from blonde hair.
Wear your new hair color for a minimum of two weeks, but ideally, for around a month before you start going blonde again.
It’ll be much easier to go from brown to blonde, as brown pigments are easier to cover up.
7. Mix Your Dyes
If you don’t have the time to wear a darker hair color for a month, then you could try a variation of the method above.
When dying your hair, cover up the red tones with brown, blue, or even green. Let it develop for a few minutes, but don’t leave it on so long that it actually dyes your hair.
Instead, you’ll simply want to see the red tones fade into more of a yellow or blonde color.
Quickly wash away this dye and continue dying your hair blonde as you normally would.
Be very careful when using this method, as using a dye that’s too pigmented or leaving the dye on too long may dye your hair an unwanted color.
Red really is a tough pigment to remove, but there are lots of different ways you can strip your hair or neutralize the vibrant tones you want to get rid of.
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Going to a hairstylist is best for this, but knowing how to remove red tones from blonde hair at home is also beneficial for those times when you simply can’t afford professional help.
