I wanted to ask people if they knew if Special Effects hair dye carried any risks? I'd been trying to find a dye that didn't fade out of my hair within two weeks. I found that Special Effects had nothing but good reviews and was highly recommended and people were even saying it lasted 2 months! I didn't believe it would last that long in my hair but I brought the pink to try. I have been using it for 2 years and had no problems, in fact I absolutely loved it and it really did stay in my hair! I really did only dye it once every two months.
Normally I dye my hair at home but I was treated to getting it done at my hairdressers today. She said she wasnt covered to use SE dye so she would use Directions which I was fine with and just thought after it fades in two weeks I would just use SE myself. However when she used a light bleach bath to try and lift the pink out of my hair (which had faded but was still very much pink) it just would not budge at all. She asked to see the SE dye so I showed her a bottle that I had with me and she was really unhappy. She said that it had 3 types of alcohol in it and that she didn't feel comfortable putting heat on the light bleach to help it lift the colour as alcohol is flammable and it could melt my hair or that it could give off bad toxins and that we didn't know what we were breathing in. She did leave the bleach on for a short time as she said that it only had a slight smell (she kept smelling it for fumes) and that it wasn't hot. When it was washed off it had basically had no effect, it was extremely minimal.
As I was dying it purple which was a darker shade than the pink she just put the Directions purple dye over the top, which she wasn't confident about either as she said the dyes could react badly to each other so she conditioned it slightly to give a barrier.
I've used the SE hair dye for two years with no problems at all and my hair is still in good condition. But my hairdressers reaction to it has me a little worried. Also I'm not someone who stays one colour so i'm worried if I use the purple will it be as permanent as the pink, where it wont lift out when I need it to? Which would more of a problem than the pink as its a darker shade.
My hairdresser said that if I wanted to use SE dye at home it was up to me but if I wanted her to change my hair colour again and I had used SE on my hair she would refuse to do it.
So I just wanted to know from any hairdressers, or anyone who would know if there is any concerns/risks I should know about when using SE dye? Was my hairdresser correct to worry so much?
Posted : November 21, 2015 4:57 am
I think she was finding excuses to explain why it didn't bleach out. Most hairdressers have no idea how to remove direct dyes TBF, but bleaching definitely won't work on SFX pinks.
Posted : November 21, 2015 7:08 am
I'm not a chemist, but I'm almost positive all the alcohol is long gone from your hair after the product is rinsed out. I'm pretty sure it just keeps the dye molecules in solution (suspension? See I said I wasn't a chemist...) She doesn't refuse anyone who uses hairspray, does she?
Posted : November 21, 2015 7:20 am
She's talking absolute rubbish. Tons of hair products have alcohol in them, seriously, go and have a look at the ingredients in some of your other hair products.
And yeah, if you have a look around on the forum you can find some fading techniques that will work better on direct dyes than bleaching 🙂
Posted : November 21, 2015 10:15 am
Bleach often just isn't very effective in lifting artificial pigment, full stop. Looking at the ingredients, cetearyl alcohol and cetyl alcohol are what's called fatty alcohols, they're conditioning agents and are in pretty much every conditioner ever made. I don't know much about benzyl alcohol but it's commonly used as a preservative. Just because it has alcohol the name doesn't meant it's in any way similar to the flammable stuff that's listed in ingredients as denatured alcohol, isopropyl alcohol or ethyl alcohol. That stuff evaporates away super quickly anyway so I'm not sure there's much risk.
Posted : November 21, 2015 2:15 pm
She's just wrong. Making excuses, as wicked pixie says. At least she's worried about chemistry she doesn't understand, too many do stupid things. Just a shame she's completely wrong!
Posted : November 21, 2015 3:36 pm
I think she was just very scared to do something that she hasn't been taught. A lot of hairdressers I've known will only use the products they were taught with, cause that's all they know.
The special effects pinks are really hard to remove. I had to grow out my atomic pink years back. Most bright dyes are hard to remove, colour removers are a better option than bleaching as there's less damage
Posted : November 21, 2015 5:01 pm
What bugs me though, is when they then try and panic the client like she seemed to have done. I had a hairdresser tell my my hair will all drop off if I use home colour removers. I told him I'd already used them many times and he just shrugged and smirked at me.
Posted : November 21, 2015 7:00 pm
Yeah I've been told similar lol
Posted : November 21, 2015 7:49 pm
I found SFX did certainly stain, and I had a little trouble colouring over it at first but I don't change my colour much so it wasn't really a huge issue for me as I tend to hover somewhere between auburn and red all the time. I agree that the alcohol thing is bullshit - as some other people said hairspray is highly flammable! And most products contain alcohol anyway!
I always take hairdresser's scare tactics with a pinch of salt, I once had one asking me to tell her who I went to for my highlights and saying that she needed me to tell the truth so she could adapt what products she used on me - she badgered me for ages and the thing was I had no highlights and my hair at the time was entirely virgin/ natural!
Posted : November 22, 2015 7:35 pm
She was doing the right thing for bleaching over an unknown, doing exactly the right kind of monitoring for bleaching/dyeing over hair that could have METALLIC SALTS from well water or certain products.
The part where "alcohol is flammable and it could melt my hair or that it could give off bad toxins and that we didn't know what we were breathing in" is just her not being very bright, to put it bluntly.
At least she was careful when not knowing what she was doing rather than going for it and melting your hair with too-strong bleach!
Posted : November 23, 2015 9:36 am
I'm so glad my hairdresser is so open and interested in what I do with my hair! He was amazed when he bleached my hair over coconut oil and is always interested in the different colour brands. He's brilliant with permanent/"normal" colours but acknowledges I know far more than him when it comes to the brights.
This one seems to me to not be very confident in her own, narrow skillset or her own abilities if she's going to just tell blatant lies.
Posted : November 23, 2015 10:34 am
*ott*
This is absolutely crap she's a crap hairdresser by the sounds of it that can't be bothered or doesn't want to do it not worth her time or money.
My hairdresser bleached my Hair no and put special effects dye on it after blow drying the bleach first after washing bleach out after a good hour. She has also put la riche directions colours on in the past box colours and her salon colours and doesn't mind at all we now just use her salon bleach
I just showed my hairdresser what she said and she said yours is lieing and a joke find yourself some else to do it
*cat*
Posted : April 17, 2016 5:04 pm
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