u/exotic_floral_tea

I have been dying my hair with mostly dark permanent colours (both boxed dye and dyes with 20/30 vol developer) for the last 8 years or so, when I started to notice grey hairs come in. The last time I did my hair, I dyed it a medium cold brown with 20 vol but noticed that my hair texture after that colouring worsened significantly.

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My hair stopped responding well to everything: mousse, gels, deep conditioners and oil treatments. It essentially looked damaged and over processed (the hair in the second pic is my hair without products right before I put in the remover). I was ready to just chop it all off or cut off the damage telling myself it was the only way to deal with the texture change but I decided to try something new before going that far (since I had grown my hair for 5 years since my last big chop).

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I remembered an old Brad Mondo video where he explained that hair can be altered when it's over-saturated with pigment deposits from colouring with permanent hair dyes. I think my hair became over-coloured two or three colouring treatments ago and I should have noticed then. So, I decided to do this as a last measure before chopping everything off. To my surprise, I was very happy with the results. My curls came back (even in the bottom where I felt like my hair was irreversibly heat damaged). I was also happy to see the lighter colour underneath that somehow makes my grey hair much less visible.

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I think that my take away is to either stop dying my hair altogether and let it grey naturally or to do these hair colour removal treatments every few times I colour it. Right now I'm going to focus on keeping it healthy and probably chop some of the ends to preserve the healthier hair at the top.

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For those wondering, I used Undo Colour from Sally's Beauty store. I also covered my head with both plastic wrap and aluminum foil to allow the treatment to properly process in the hair and maximize results since I had a lot of colour pigments packed in there and used hot water during the rinsing (it's the only time where it is better to use hotter water on hair).

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The first picture is my hair this morning after I reconditioned it, added almond oil and mousse, and blow dried it with a diffuser.