How to Remove Excess Hair Dye

Written By
Susan Reynolds
Susan Reynolds
Published: Dec 18, 2009
Updated: Feb 5, 2019
1 minute read

Have you recently dyed your hair and want to remove some or all of the color? The sooner you try to remove the color, the better. Sometimes home dye kits or even salons don't give us the results we want. If your color turned out darker or a different shade than you anticipated, first attempt to remove the excess dye before you go to a salon for a redo. You can try some surprisingly simple remedies that are inexpensive and effective at stripping out excess hair dye.

Wash your hair several times with a clarifying shampoo, which will strip out some of the color in your hair if it ended up too dark. Clarifying shampoo that is designed to remove chlorine from swimmers' hair also helps pull color from the hair shaft.

Shampoo with a specially formulated shampoo if the clarifying shampoo isn't working. Keep shampooing and rinsing your hair until the color fades.

Purchase L'Oreal's Color Zap Haircolor Removal kit for less than $12. Apply the product to your hair and it will remove most of the hair dye, even permanent dye. The sooner you apply this product, the better it works at stripping out excess color. This product will remove almost all of the hair dye so that you can start over again with a new hair color.

Call a hair salon and ask them to fix your botched dye job as a last resort.

Susan Reynolds

Susan Reynolds has been a writer since 2008. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida and is a licensed real estate agent in Florida.

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