First Time Customizing Hair Colors

The only other time I’ve attempted to customize hair dye was making pastel shades for my bangs. I’ve actually never mixed colors to create my own shade, but part of the reason I did this was because I had a lot of leftover dyes that weren’t enough for a full application. I don’t want to be one of those “waste not, want not” folk, so I took all those dyes and started mixing.

Prior to this, my hair was a neon pink and neon orange split dye. To make an easy transition, that’s what I based off of – leftovers of those two dyes, and then I added similar shades to create a deeper, non-neon version of them.

My base was very faded, almost back to platinum/level 10, but definitely stained. I also had nearly an inch of roots, and about 2 inches of a darker level 8 but also stained.

If I were extra I probably would’ve named these shades and took note of the proportions. But I didn’t because I was lazy and only using up leftover dyes as previously mentioned.

Orange side:

This was mostly Neon Orange, with a dollop of Riot, and a dash of Funshine Bear. The result was a bright orange that wasn’t too neon but didn’t fall reddish. If I could make more of it I would. I put pure Riot at the lower half of my left side, then the custom shade on the upper half of my left side. I think it blended quite well.

Pink side:

The pink side was a little more complicated. It was a base of Electric Paradise, a dollop of Dust Pink, and a dash of Vampire Red (which was already expired at this point). The result looked a lot like ketchup, which I wasn’t into, so I added a lot of different conditioners: 1 full 50g tub of Hair Tonic Mask, which was white; a dollop of Cream Silk’s Tri-Oleo, which was a light blue; and then a bit of Aveda’s conditioner which was a little on the yellow/off-white side. I put pure Vampire Red on the lower half of my right side, then the custom shade on the upper half of my right side.

Here’s a side-by side of the custom shades in front of a ring light and in front of my window.