As you can guess by the title, I’ve dyed my hair every color of the rainbow. I started dying my hair in high school and I kept up with it until grade 12 due to my parents wanting me to have “normal” hair for grad. I think that everyone should dye their hair at least once. It’s a fun way to change things up and if you choose semi permanent dye, it doesn’t last forever. In this article, I’ll be going down the list and talking about my experience with each hair color, some pros and cons and also a few of the dye brands I’ve used.
There are three staple brands that I’ve used. Arctic Fox, Manic Panic and Splat. I’d honestly rank them in that order.
Arctic Fox is by far my favorite. It’s concentrated, incredibly bright and lasts forever. You also don’t need that much to get a full coat. I have what some would deem insanely thick hair so I usually need at least an entire bottle but with Arctic Fox, half a bottle and my entire head is covered. It’s also vegan and smells like grapes which I absolutely love.
Manic Panic is a staple of hair dying. They’ve been around for decades and they have some amazing colors. I find that the consistency is a bit strange and I sometimes need two containers to completely coat my hair. But they have some really amazing colors that Arctic Fox doesn’t. For example, I used the color electric lizard on my hair and it’s so insanely bright that I adore it. I also loved how after midnight started as this deep midnight blue and then turned into this amazing light blue. Manic Panic is also vegan and cruelty free.
Splat is something else. Splat was one of the first brands I used and I have a love hate relationship with it. It’s cheap, available at literally every store, it comes with bleach and it lasts. I have literally had to bleach my hair twice after using splat and even then, there were still bits of color that wouldn’t come out. But because it lasts, it also means that it will stain literally all of your surroundings. It has its value but there are so many other brands that do the same if not better.
Red was one of those colors I did because I had only ever done blue until that point and I thought “Let’s do the opposite”. I liked having red hair, it was a change of pace from my usual cool toned blues but red is not an easy color. It bleeds like you wouldn’t believe, I would spend 20 minutes just waiting for the hair dye to stop running in the shower and despite the fact that it bled so much, it lasted. If there’s one thing about red pigments in hairdye, they do not come out easily. My hair went from firetruck red to pink-ish to slightly less pink-ish to finally my regular hair color that was pink when the light hit it in a certain way. I could not escape red no matter how hard I tried. It’s a fun color but beware. Pros: Cool color, lasted forever. Cons: Lasted forever.
I’ve done orange twice. It was a weird experience. The first time I did it, it was more of a red than an orange but it looked nice. The other time it was neon orange and it looked awesome. It was orange with a bit of yellow mixed in and it looked like my hair was constantly on fire. I loved it. However, much like its sibling Red, bleaching it out was incredibly difficult. It went from orange to a weird desaturated slightly brassy mess. Orange had the potential of being one of my favorite colors but I just found that it fell short compared to others. Pros: Vibrant, you will get spotted from 20 miles away. Cons: Hard to get rid of.
Yellow was a nice change of pace from everything else I had done. If you thought red was loud? Yellow was cranking it up to one hundred and then some. I did get called Butters from South Park for the time that I had it but yellow was just a fun, quirky color to have. It’s close enough to slightly normal that you don’t get as many stares as you would with a color like green or orange but it still sticks out. Yellow also transitions really nicely into green if you want to go to a different color without bleaching it. It faded well but I did start dressing in some incredibly wild, 80’s patterned shirts for the time period. Pros: Bright, somewhat “normal”. Cons: Leads to questionable fashion choices.
Green is a color that I kept for a really long time. I had green from approximately November 2018 until March 2019 it just worked. It was perfect as December came and Christmas happened and it was nice as the winter transitioned into the spring. I had two different shades of green, a darker more Iris green and an electric lime green. Both colors had their merit and seeing them in the mirror everyday just brought me a lot of joy. It was also a good color that I used to transition to teal. Continuing with creative nicknames, I got called Ferb and Minecraft Grass Block for the period of time that my hair was green. Pros: Good spring time color, bright and unique. Cons: None
Blue is probably the color I’ve done most often. It was the first color I did and it has a soft spot in my heart. If I’m ever unsure of what color I want to do, I always default to blue. And I’ve done at least three million different shades of blue up until this point. Navy blue, sky blue, teal, aqua, you name it, it’s probably been on my hair. Blue is one of those colors that anyone can pull off. It’s also a seasonally neutral color. You can go darker in the winter, brighter in the summer and I personally go to teal in the spring. I just love blue. Pros: Neutral fashion color, lasts and fades nicely, variety in possible shades. Cons: None.
Purple was a color I didn’t have the chance to really fall in love with. I love cool toned colors and purple is no different. My goal was a cool toned grape purple and in my hair, it turned out a slightly reddish purple. Which I have no complaints about, it looked amazing and it went with my entire wardrobe despite being such a weird color. But I didn’t have it for very long so I never got the chance to really have purple hair before combining it with some blue dye I had left over to create a weird purple and indigo streaked mashup on my hair. I did however have some issues when it came to getting rid of the color. I blame that less on the color and more so on the product I used to remove the color. But that’s a story for another day. Pros: Another neutral fashion color, variety in possible shades. Cons: None
I hope that my hair coloring choices inspire you or at least help you make a hair color decision of your own!