Going from plantinum blonde back to dark ash blonde (dye, color, product)

[Shaddowfax]

Hello to all the haircolor experts!

I'm naturally a super, SUPER ashy dark blonde (I used to call my natural haircolor "decaying corpse blonde" because I loathed it so much). I've been using box dye for years, with my go-to product being nice n easy's 103A Natural Medium Neutral Blonde. On my hair, it comes out nearly platinum with gold untertones. I've been thinking about giving my natural hair color a try again, and had had the idea that I could just gradually get a bit darker, and tried the next shade darker with "ash" in it from my 103A. I tried it about 6 months ago and it was a DISASTER. My hair turned purplish. A couple do-over's with my normal color set that straight and I'm back to my megalight plantium/gold blonde.

So, question being, wtf is going on with my hair and why didn't just dying it was a shade of "ash blonde" work? It's already much lighter than my natural color, I thought going darker was suppose to be easy. I know I might have some issues with how much gold there is in my hair (I think it's a side effect of having natural red undertones in my natural haircolor), but even with that it's still light enough that shouldn't I be able to go darker and ash over it? And, if I CAN get it ashy again, if it's still as bad as I remember will I be able to go back to light blonde?

If possible to do this fairly cheaply with box dye, that'd be awesome. Minus that disaster, I've always had great results from box dye both when I used to dye dark brown, then when I eventually migrated to super light, so I'm not one of those folks who believes you should HAVE to spend a fortunre to get the color you want. My current blonde is great, I've just had it for awhile now and I'd like to give the natural color a try, ya know?

Thank you!
-Aspen

[weezycom]

Too much of a switch from the light natural to the darker ash is why it went purple -- all the ash picked up in the cuticle of the processed hair. You'll have to go to the same level of color in a natural, then in subsequent colorings, tone it to ash.

If you want to go back to light blonde, remember that color won't lift deposited color out. It worked the first time because you were working on uncolored hair. This time, if you want to go back, you'll have to do a dual process -- lift the old color out and the deposit the new color on. That's one that I would have done professionally (I know, b/c I just did that a few months ago -- it's much trickier than I'd be comfortable doing at home, and I'll do just about any darn thing to my hair myself).

[tilli]

Box hair color is formulated to bring virgin, pigmented hair from a certain starting shade range to a certain end shade range. You were starting with processed hair which has had almost all of it's natural pigment removed. The purple is in the ash shade to neutralize unwanted gold tones revealed by lifting pigmented hair, but your hair has very little gold left to tone since it is already lifted to nearly platinum, thus the purple was dominant.

So - to get the shade you want, try getting a semi-permanent in a neutral medium blonde shade. That should get you a lot closer. You'll have to reapply it fairly frequently. Hair that has been lifted is more porous and will grab color more than virgin hair, so choose a shade that's lighter than where you want to wind up. Don't choose an ash shade, don't choose a gold shade. You want neutral for this application.

To get your hair permanently to something close to your natural shade you really should consider a good colorist. This sort of color change on previously colored hair can be very difficult to pull off with a boxed color unless you don't mind off shades or dull opaque results.