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Beauty

22nd May 2016

Hair colourists are warning buyers about this over the counter hair dye

Cassie Delaney

We’ve already seen a tremendous amount of hair trends for 2016. Pastels and Rose Gold hair are really dominating the beauty trends their popularity is continuing to rise.

Alas, the light pastel shades can be tricky to achieve and are best done in a salon by professional colourists. However that can be quite expensive and it’s no surprise that people are flocking to pharmacies picking up over the counter dyes to try recreate the look themselves.

One hair dye brand has received a lot of criticism for its failure to produce desired results.

Hair colourist Sydniiee Oliveira created a meme strongly urging people not to use L’Oreal’s Feria Smokey Pastels range.

Oliveira explained to Hello Giggles:

“I don’t have anything against L’Oreal as a color line per se. They make great professional products, but in my experience the Feria line, in any shade, has had the most extreme negative effects. I made the meme about these specific shades because they are SO popular right now for girls to want these pastel colors that just can’t be achieved from a box. I’m afraid all these young girls that can’t afford to make it into a salon will think this is an easy (cheap) way to get these high maintenance shades, and completely ruin their hair.”

Another colourist Christine Silverman also advised against the line.

“The pastel colors that we use professionally usually don’t have any kind of developer or ammonia in them. It’s a double process — the hair is lifted and then whatever color the client desires is overlaid on top of it, and it’s pretty temporary. Whereas, I looked at the ingredients on that product, and it has ammonia,” she said.

“People going into the store, they might not understand that, if they have dark hair and they put something like that onto it, it’s going to lift it up to kind of an orange-y color. They’re not gonna get the results that they want or that they see on the box.”

The real danger Oliveira explains is the post-box dye cover up in a salon. She said the worst cases she had seen includes “LITERAL heating of the hair, so hot you can’t even touch the foils, smoking, lots of ‘water’ start[ing] to drip, and eventually melting of the hair itself.”

The problem is cheap ‘one-size fits all’ ingredients.

Oliveira explains:

“Most box dyes contain cheaper, more volatile chemicals that do not react well to our professional products we use in the salon. They are made in a ‘one size fits most’ kind of way, and that just isn’t the way you can approach hair color.”

Stylist Kayla Rose conducted a test of the

She uploaded the below picture with the following caption:

“The “pink” side looks more copper, and the “lavender” side looks brown. The extensions that were platinum with light blonde lowlights. Obviously it turned them both pink and purple, but they were splotchy, and they are definitely not pastel. Seriously people, if you want a pastel color your hair has to be WHITE blonde with little to no traces of yellow in it. PLEASE don’t buy this box dye shit. It’s not worth it. The extensions and the doll heads hair felt like shit too.”

So sadly it looks like if we want to get the look we’re going to have to do it the hard way. Always consult your stylist before taking matters into your own hands.