From Red to Blonde: JoBaz Hair Colour Remover!

First, some hair background.

I'll be honest, I've never been particularly interested in beauty or my appearance. My mum despaired when I'd wander into GAME to spend my pocket money/wage rather than Boots or clothes shops. I only started wearing make-up when I was 17 and my acne exploded into existence (thanks, crappy family genetics!). Even now, aged 26, I don't put much effort into it, if I bother to put any on at all. This was made particularly evident when I went on TV and the instructions were to turn up to the studio wearing make-up that one would wear for a night out. The make-up lady commented that I'd "made a start" and proceeded to start from scratch on top of what I'd put on (and did a heck of a much better job than I could ever have dreamed of doing myself). 

My hair is a different matter, though. I'm a bit vain about it. When I was a kid it was the nicest golden blonde you've ever seen. Had it remained that way, I'd have never touched it with dye. BUT NO, family genetics strike again! By age 14 it had dulled to the ashiest mousy dark blonde possible. Fed up of it, I mithered my dad and he said I could have it dyed at the hairdressers'. I had a lovely medium brown with a hint of red in my mind and came out with a red that could rival a fire engine. I was horrified and it was a few days before starting Year 11 and I couldn't face the remarks I knew would come my way (god, I hated school) so dyed over it with a dark brown boxed dye. And WOW, I loved it. So much that I dyed it dark for the next few years.

I then varied between red and brown until I was 20. I really, really wanted to go blonde again. I was frightened of bleach so looked into going blonde and discovered hair colour remover. Now, this was back in 2009 and Britain was shockingly bad at stocking anything of the sort and I found nothing. I ended up importing some Color Oops from the US, which cost a small fortune and the shipping! Oh, the shipping. But anyway. I whacked it on, did the rinsing and didn't rinse enough and was left with the ginger-iest ginger you've ever seen. I thought I'd done enough research into the results and whacked an ash blonde dye over it straight after the process and was left with ash roots, ginger in the middle and almost black ends where it had re-oxidised.

The hairdresser silently laughed at me when I asked for blonde streaks and said it wasn't possible. Disheartened, I dyed it dark again and it remained that way until I was 23. I wasn't giving up this time, but avoided colour removers and went straight for the bleach. By this time, ColourB4 had been released in the UK but after my last experience I didn't want to try it. I bleached it twice with a Jerome Russell kit, whacked an ash blonde over the top and was so incredibly close, with gingery ends. This would not defeat me so several ash blondes later, I was FINALLY happy. And luckily, my hair was in good enough condition that my ends weren't fried and looked in decent nick.

I kept it this way for over a year and somehow ended up at around a level 9 blonde through dyeing alone. Then. Oh god. Cringe with me, guys. I decided I wanted white hair. Bloody Daenerys Targaryen. I've never even read/watched Game of Thrones. But I loved her hair. That was my mistake. I bought some bleach powder and 30 vol (9%) developer and bleached and bleached again. I then toned the life out of it. To be fair, the colour was quite nice, it was pale and silvery and had a hint of purple sometimes when I toned too much. But the condition of my hair was horrific. I experienced a lot of breakage, loss of hair and I honestly hadn't realised how much damage I'd done until it was too late. The back of my head wasn't too bad but the front was awful. It looked frizzy and straw-like and it was a mistake I will never make again. I'd bleached it without knowing what I'd done to it and kept experiencing breakage and weakness weeks after bleaching but because I'd continued to bleach in the days following the initial bleachings, it just got even worse. It had that awful cotton wool feel, felt too soft, but not a good soft, a too-damaged soft and it had lost its elasticity and eurgh. My hair is ONLY JUST back to fully normal, non-bleach damaged 18+ months later after a lot of trimming and keeping it to chin-length (it's now collarbone-length).

So, bleach is fine as long as you don't overdo it. Which should be flipping obvious and I'd heard horror stories about bleach (which is why I avoided it the first time) and when I first went blonde, it was absolutely fine. Because I didn't overdo it. But then I did. Lesson learned. Never again. I'll just admire white-haired beauties from the safety of my room.

So anyway. Onto the point of this.

The colour I was before dyeing it red was a light golden copper colour. I wanted to introduce some warmth into my hair after being ash for so long. It was a gorgeous colour but unfortunately, all of the red washed out in a couple of weeks, leaving me with a bit of an "ehh" blonde colour. Behold!

Apologies for the terrible image but LOOK AT MY CUTE CAT, oh, and the hair. I decided if I was going to have some red in my hair, I might as well go turbo and just whack a really red dye on it. I chose Garnier Nutrisse 6.60 Fiery Red (I didn't want to go any darker than a level 6 in case I wanted to go back to blonde - hindsight, I'm proud of ya). My natural colour is a level 7... something. Something ridiculously ashy. Anyway. It was gorgeous and I loved it. 

It had faded considerably around 4 weeks later so I used Scott Cornwall's Colour Restore Deep Red (a review of which I'll write separately) and did a full tonal thing. It restored it really nicely and I was happy for three more weeks. Then, I realised with this colour hair, I was restricted with using these cool hair chalks my sister had bought me for Christmas. I realised I wanted to go blonde again so I could use 'em all (there is a green, blue and purple which would've just clashed horribly with the red). I wanted to avoid bleach like the plague so knew I was going to go with a colour remover.

ColourB4 was considered but I've used JoBaz before to remove a semi-permanent dark blonde so I could go a bit lighter and had great success with it. I did hesitate as I wasn't sure if it was any good at removing red, but I had nothing to lose and had an emergency dye at hand in case it went wrong (HEARTILY recommend keeping an "emergency dye" in a drawer - you never know! I usually have an ash blonde to hand). Plus JoBaz was less than half the price of ColourB4.

It was decided. I bought JoBaz in Max Strength from Home Bargains (also available at Savers and some supermarkets) for £4.49 (in April 2015) and I bought two boxes just in case. The kit comes with the parts you have to mix (oh, the technical terms) A and B, buffer C and some gloves that fit giants (I have tiny hands as I'm only 5'1"!). I mixed all the stuff then proceeded to plonk it on my hair.

Please note: this is a colour remover that removes artificial pigment ONLY. It CANNOT lighten natural hair and it CANNOT be used as a bleach. It doesn't touch natural hair colour. When you use it, it takes you back to the LIGHTEST colour you've ever been. If you've previously bleached/lightened your hair, it will take you (eventually, if you have build-up) to THIS SHADE. Take note that permanent colours almost always contain peroxide. This lightens the natural hair colour. So, if you've even just gone a shade lighter, it will take you back to this lighter shade, not your natural colour. This is why you can't return to your natural colour if you've lightened it then dyed it a lighter colour previously. This is also why you'll get ginger if you're removing a dark colour.

The reason I always keep an ash blonde nearby is because ash counteracts the ginger. Ginger has red and orange tones and ash shades either have a green or a blue (or a mix of both... grue?) base to them. Green cancels out red, blue cancels out orange. Now, in my years of buying ash dyes I've NEVER seen any indication on the box or through online research as to what base the dye has, whether it's green or blue. So I've never been able to tell if I've been using the "correct" one. I tend to stick with L'Oreal for heavy brassiness as this deposits a lot of ashy tones. I use Nice 'N Easy for minimal brassy tones because, while I think their ash shades are gorgeous, they tend to wash out quickly and not cover brassy tones as well as L'Oreal (based on personal experience, anyway). To counteract yellow (eg. canary yellow) tones, a purple-based dye would be necessary. This is why a lot of toning shampoos, such as Shimmer Lights (which I've just ordered off Amazon because I can't find the sodding thing ANYWHERE in stores in the UK) or Touch of Silver, are purple. Purple shampoos when blonde are excellent for stopping hair getting that yellow tinge that so often happens a few weeks after dyeing blonde.

This was my hair just before I applied it:

A word about this: it does honk to high heavens. If you've done your research, you'll have seen this noted more than a few times! It clings to whatever you're wearing so I'd recommend chucking it for good in the wash as soon as you're done. It also resurfaces the first time you wash your hair in the next few days, too. It's not completely horrific but it ain't pleasant.

I left it on for an hour just to make sure. It requires that you aren't in a cold room and that there are no drafts. I covered my hair in the Home Bargains plastic bag I'd brought it home in (we'd run out of cling film... that's a lie, I couldn't be bothered to go and find it), tied it with a bobble at the base of my neck and blasted it for a couple of minutes with a hot hairdryer. The heat accelerates the process so it's recommended. When I peeled the bag off, I could see the ends of my hair and was shocked that I couldn't see any red whatsoever, just a chunk of very yellow hair. 

Now, rinsing. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!

PAY ATTENTION

SERIOUSLY

Rinse like you have never rinsed before. If you don't rinse enough, it will RE-OXIDISE. This means that it will go darker/more brassy over the next few days. If you choose to dye straight afterwards, your hair will go darker. Possibly even back to the colour you had before you used the remover. This stuff works by shrinking the artificial colour molecules down so they can be washed out of the hair. If you fail to wash them out, they grow again and make your hair appear dyed like before. 

THIS is what happened to me back when I used Color Oops. I didn't rinse for nearly long enough and my ends went straight back to a dark brown. I PROMISE rinsing loads will prevent this. It recommends at least 5 minutes of rinsing, I did 8. Then you lather the buffer in, leave for a couple of minutes, then rinse again for at least 5 minutes. You won't see any colour washing out, the water will run clear/slightly bubbly, because the molecules will be too small to see. I did 10 minutes this time, buffered again, then rinsed and got out of the shower without conditioning.

Lawdy lawd, I should have conditioned. The reason I didn't was because I wasn't sure if I'd need to dye over it straight away and conditioning isn't recommended if you do this. However, my hair was really tangled and I couldn't get a wide-toothed comb through it at all. So I decided, whatever it looked like, that I wouldn't dye it straight away and I'd just live with the colour for a few days and hopped back into the shower and deep conditioned with Aussie 3 Minute Miracle (the Reconstruction one).

At the end, this was the result:

Well wow, I wasn't expecting such a good result at all. Look at it! That is gob-smackingly amazing. I was fully expecting a ginger colour because I'd used red. Red is notoriously difficult to get out of the hair so I was seriously staggered. It was a bit more yellow-y than in the picture and didn't suit my skin tone at all (otherwise I would've left it as it was!). As I was fearful of re-oxidation, I decided to wait a few days before colouring over it.

I managed three days before I reached for the dye. In that time, it had gone ever so slightly more brassy (barely noticeable) but not orange! The blonde looked more golden and it wasn't a horrible colour at all. I just didn't suit it. I'd chosen L'Oreal Excellence Creme, 8.1 Light Ash Blonde:

I love this shade so much. On hindsight, I may have gone for the 9.1 instead. I love the lightness of this shade. However, I'm also glad I didn't, as my roots will be far less noticeable with the 8.1 rather than the 9.1.

My hair just before colouring (those roots!):

And the end result!:

Note: I am aware my hair needs a good trim so please excuse the weird ends.

No re-oxidation!! Happy days. My hair feels great, too. Soft and shiny. This wasn't nearly, NEARLY as damaging as bleach (even though it feels it after the buffering stage!)

I'm thrilled with the result. Now, please listen because I have a thought. I think the reason this was so successful was because I only had one layer of permanent red. Therefore, there were far fewer molecules to rinse out than if I'd had several layers of red on red on brown on red, etc. When I tried with Color Oops after years and years of dyeing brown and red, it wasn't nearly as successful (not even close!). I had severe re-oxidation (a lot of which was my fault for not rinsing enough) and came out disappointed. If you're about to try this after years of doing the same, please be prepared for various colours and really dark ends after a few days. The instructions say it can be attempted up to three times. And with such a colour build-up, I'd definitely recommend doing it multiple times (up to three - no idea what would happen if more were attempted but if they say a maximum of three, it must mean it gets damaging), leaving at least a few days in between each one.

The box says that the hair can be re-dyed straight after using the colour remover. I'd recommend either waiting a few days to see if there is any oxidation, or using a non-peroxide dye (as peroxide ones cause re-oxidation). PLEASE BE AWARE that a lot of semi-permanent ones also contain peroxide! Not as much as permanent hair colour, but there is some. A temporary dye usually lasts 6-8 washes and contains no peroxide so you're safe with these ones.

It is ever so slightly darker than I was after but I know it'll fade in the next couple of weeks. And now I can give those hair chalks my sis got me a proper go. Sweet. I hope this was helpful to anyone considering using JoBaz. For me, it gets a STONKING thumbs up.

A quick note about "fashion" colours and how effective JoBaz/hair colour removers would be on these colours. Fashion colours, such as those made by Directions, Crazy Color, Manic Panic, etc. work differently to standard box colours. These do not penetrate the hair shaft, instead, they coat the hair and stain it. Now, if these colours have been applied over natural hair, removing them shouldn't be so difficult. However, if hair has first been bleached, it is likely that the colour will stubbornly remain, even when faded, because it has stained the hair cortex itself. JoBaz isn't designed to work on fashion colours. There is one, ColourB4 Fashion Colours, that HAS been designed for these colours. However, it seems like it removes some and not others. Some users of colour removers have reported that reds and pinks have been successfully removed using these. However, blues are normally untouched/very little removed. Judging from this, I would NOT recommend JoBaz for hair that has been coloured with a blue (possibly also green, particularly a green with a blue base) fashion colour.

And finally. Have another photo of my cat. Because she is just so flippin' cute.