palty hair dye review

so, I got really bored and decided to dye my hair. so I decided to pick up some dye at the asian market, because I heard they are better suited to dye black hair. so. here we are!

I got the lightest blonde I could (sparkling blonde), to draw out the color, and then a pretty pinkish brown (sakura creamy) to give a nice pastel shade for spring. I also needed something that could pass as natural as I’m not allowed to have crazy hair for work.

because I bought the boxes in a store in america, they did have english instructions inside. but if you are an avid at home colorist, it still would have been pretty easy to understand as all the steps were labeled with numbers. one thing I did find to be kind of ingenious was a hole that you could punch through the box to sit the developer in. just so you wouldn’t accidentally knock it off the counter when you were mixing the chemicals.

here is a picture of my hair before I touched it:

the color closest to my scalp is my natural black, and further down was dyed over the reddish auburn color that I had about six months ago. my hair is naturally extremely dark so I was worried about this not even working, or being so slight it wouldn’t be noticeable. I was wrong.

I applied the bleach first (sloppily), and let it sit for ~30 minutes. it smelled pretty bad, but I had no irritation when I was letting it sit. and I did get a good amount on my skin because I missed my head at one point, and still didn’t get red or itchy at all. so that was awesome!

half and hour later, I took off my kewl shower cap and immediately realized I did a HORRIBLE job putting the bleach in evenly. which was all user error. I barely got the roots in front, missed entire patches and bleached way too heavily in the middle of my head.

the kit provided some conditioner to use in the shower when you wash out the bleach, but I did not think there was enough at all. luckily I had some left over conditioner from a previous at home effort, so I used the rest of that and by the time all the bleach was out, my hair did not feel dry at all.

my hair was an uneven coppery color. it was an unhappy couple of hours while I waited for it to air dry. I really didn’t want to blow dry it, and risk any further damage.

after my hair was dry, I applied the dye. MUCH MORE CAREFULLY. I sectioned my hair off with clips and brushed it in as evenly as I could. and I used way more dye than I thought was necessary, just in case. I had heard that the palty dyes still have a fair amount of bleach in them, so I was hoping that the dye would help even out the patchiness.

which it did! so that was good. but my hair was definitely not the pinky brown that the front of the box had advertised. it was still super orange and ginger. but it was definitely more even and my roots were pretty much gone.

unfortunately the sun had set while I was dying my hair, so these are taken in the bathroom.

as you can see it’s pretty red. it’s not a bad color, but definitely not what I had been expecting when I took off my shower cap. the big thing for me at least is that the color is (mostly) even, and my hair actually feels pretty soft and healthy.

also it’s important to remember that even salon colored reds fade pretty quickly, so I probably won’t have this intense of a color for a while. either way, it’s nothing another box of dye won’t fix.