How My Hair Colorist Corrected the Worst Dye Job I’ve Ever Had

When you get an appointment with the owner of a namesake salon, you have a certain level of expectation, especially when that salon is in a rather fancy-schmancy area like Palm Beach. So when I visited said owner at the aforementioned salon, I had full confidence in him when he said it would be no problem to give me the silvery highlights I was requesting. I'd heard from other colorists that it could take several appointments to take dark-brown hair like mine to a cool gray, but he seemed quite sure that all I needed was a few hours with him and his trusty chemicals.

The other colorists were probably right.

The Fiasco

After my hair was painted, folded up in foils, heated, toned, and rinsed, the owner's assistant took my hair out of the towel, revealing that it was very dark. I initially chalked it up to wetness, but as he dried my hair into a sleek, straight style, it became apparent that my hair wasn't highlighted so much as it was pitch-black. Or at least I thought it was pitch-black until another patron walked by and said, "I love the midnight blue."

"It's so much darker than I expected," I told the owner when he came by after the blowout. He assured me that it would "fade" and "evolve," eventually revealing the silvery look I'd been seeking. I couldn't tell if he believed his own words, but he took me to the courtyard to take pictures of my hair in natural light as though this was exactly the color he'd been asked to create.

As for the fading and evolving, it started to do so very quickly, though not with the promised results. Within a few weeks and despite using shampoo for color-treated hair, I was left with a splotchy combination of brownish-black, olive green, yellow, and even a few hints of periwinkle. I'd call it "moldy pickle" — or perhaps "old, wet, wooden fence," considering that when my husband took a picture of me on our front patio, my iPhone's portrait mode had trouble distinguishing where my hair ended and our old, wet, wooden fence began.

When I took to Instagram seeking advice (and sympathy, if we're being entirely honest), I quickly heard from Chicago-based colorist Melissa Rose, whose work I'd written about before (and who I would have happily gone to for a color correction if she didn't live over 1,000 miles away). She enthusiastically recommended and put me in touch with Olivia Smalley, a South Florida colorist who has an impressive 132,000 followers on Instagram, where she's known as @omgartistry. Even more impressive, however, is the work she shares on her account: stunning, seamless shades of blonde, pastel highlights that look like they naturally grow out of clients' heads, and mind-boggling transformations from questionable color to incredible outcomes. I decided I wanted to be one of those transformations.

The Fix

After a brief direct-message conversation that established Smalley is a total sweetheart, I drove 40 miles to Amanda Lynn & Co, the lovely-yet-unpretentious salon she works from when she's not touring the country teaching and speaking at colorist conventions. We hugged and started chatting like old friends immediately as she and her assistant examined the shade of Swamp Thing on my head.

"Do you mind if I try lifting a couple sections?" she asked, making sure I'd be OK with sporting a couple hidden strands of blonde between then and my official appointment. I gave her the green light, because at that point, I figured a couple random blonde streaks would probably be an improvement. She proceeded to use Schwarzkopf BlondeMe Lightener on one strand and Matrix SoColor Cult Color Eraser on the other. "Lightener seems like the obvious choice to lift color out of hair, but it could cause more damage in the long run," Smalley explains. "On the other hand, color eraser removes both direct and oxidative dyes from the hair — artificial pigments." When she saw that they had similar results on my hair, she decided she'd initially approach the process with the Matrix SoColor Cult Color Eraser to help maintain the health of my hair.

Smalley asked me if I still wanted to attempt something silvery; I told her I just wanted my hair to not look like dried seaweed. We decided our goal would be a coppery, almost peachy caramel that would blend well with my naturally dark-brown roots — a look I loved, and one she felt was truly achievable in a single appointment, especially since, to cancel out the funky green tint, she'd be applying a reddish glaze. She sent me home with instructions to wash my hair with a clarifying shampoo — I went with Bumble and bumble's Sunday Shampoo — several times before my appointment to help get as much color out as possible.

I returned to the salon a couple of weeks later, nervous but optimistic. Smalley washed my hair twice to help loosen up any mineral or product buildup. "I’m sure you've heard that dirty hair is better when you go to have your color done, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth," Smalley says. "When there's more buildup on the hair, the product — in this case, color remover — has to break through the buildup before it can get to work on your actual hair. That leads to a longer processing time and sometimes even undesired tones."

Smalley then applied the Matrix SoColor Cult Color Eraser for about 20 minutes, and she was shocked — in a good way. "Your hair is about the color of the inside of a banana, which, in the hair world, is a great thing," she says of the eraser results. She went on to use a concoction of Joico's Lumishine Natural Red Gold and Lumishine Copper, along with Olaplex, the treatment countless colorists rely on to help keep their clients' hair in good condition.

The Results

Amazingly, that was all that was needed to take me from mop-found-in-a-sewer to the exact color we'd set out to achieve.

"I was so excited we didn’t have to use bleach," Smalley tells me. "When it comes to color corrections, I typically play it safe and try to not get carried away. I was so thrilled with the way your hair lifted that I nearly had a perfect canvas to work on."

Not everyone seeking a color correction will achieve their desired results without bleach, however. Smalley explains that, had I wanted to go blonde, she would have had to do a full application. That's why she stresses the importance of consultations.

"For clients going through major transformations, a consultation is key. Consultations make sure that you and your stylist are on the same page and that your goals and expectations are realistic and attainable," explains Smalley, who says she never would have promised silver hair in a single sitting. "With my clients, I always under-promise and over-deliver. Black to silver will almost never happen without compromising and causing unnecessary breakage. I say, we could graciously go through the stages of blonde or you can have no hair — the choice is yours."

My choice is to keep going back to Smalley, no matter what color I decide to do next.

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