DIY Hair Color Guide: Best Products to Use at Home

Coloring your hair is easy these days as there are many great products that can change your color with minimal damage. However, it’s not so easy to do this yourself. Even choosing which of the many products to use is a challenge for non-professionals. And making the right decision here is essential if you want to avoid damaging your hair so badly it breaks or even starts falling out.

Sadly, social distancing measures will be in effect for a while. Therefore, it won’t be safe to visit a salon. But the following tips should help you choose the products that you can use without experience and get fantastic results.

Experimentation and Fun: Washout Hair Color

Temporary, or washout, hair color is the safest kind product to use at home. It’s also the one that can give you most fun. There are washout dyes in every bright color imaginable and you can use these products to create galaxy or rainbow hair.

As the name suggests, these products will wash out quite fast. They are also rather safe to use. And even if you aren’t satisfied with the result, you can remove the product completely in a few washes. You might need to use a specialized shampoo to do this right away.

Unfortunately, this kind of hair color has limitations. It will only take to bleached hair. Natural blondes might also be able to enjoy vivid colors, like blue or green. However, if you have naturally dark untreated hair, these colors might not take at all. If they do, they won’t be as bright as you would expect from the picture on the package.

Products for a more permanent solution

If you want your tresses to be of some rich and magnificent color that looks as if applied by professional, you’ll need to use more permanent dyes. They are more damaging, but it’s because of their formulas that you can achieve significant color changes.

To make the colors truly alive, a stylist might use techniques like highlights and low lights. However, doing those yourself is very difficult. But you might consider using hybrid hair color, which will create a similar effect of rich color with additional glowing hues.

Formula-wise, you’ll need to choose between permanent, semi-permanent, and demi-permanent products. They differ not only in how long the color will last for you but also how deep they get into the hair. The vividness of color depends on this. Therefore, if you want to make a radical change, you might not be able to do this with anything but bleaching or permanent dye.

Permanent hair color is the most popular product to use. However, if you have no experience with it, starting with it at home is a risk. This hair dye is going to alter your hair irrevocably. Therefore, any unsatisfactory result will last for a long time. Also, it’s the most damaging type of hair color product.

Demi-permanent dye doesn’t contain ammonia, so it’s not as damaging as permanent. This also means it’s not as long lasting. However, it can give you a nice rich color that should last for about 20 washes.

Semi-permanent hair color products are the least damaging among this group. This kind of hair dye should last for about 8 washes. This is a good choice for your first home coloring treatment because it will allow you to see if the color works for you. This type of dye is also very good for covering gray hair.

A few words about the bleach

If you want to go blonde or get some unnatural hair color without the help of a professional, you should be careful. Bleaching affects your hair greatly. It literally removes color pigments from your hair. Therefore, the result is highly dependent on how exact the chemical reaction is.

Simply put, unless you do everything exactly right, you might literally burn your hair. Some of the possible tragedies that result from a bad bleaching job include your hair turning green or becoming so brittle, it starts breaking when touched.

And if that happens, there will be no solution but to cut off the damaged hair and wait for it to regrow. These things considered, you really should avoid bleaching at home. If you do take the risk, choose products designed for home use. They aren’t as effective, but the risk is lower.