Cheap Hair Dye Trick

Colouring hair at home is much cheaper than going to a salon but with home hair dye kits ranging from £4 to £11 it can still be an expensive business.

My natural hair colour is bright blonde so I have to re-dye my roots frequently so I don't look like I'm going bald or greying.  For the past few years I've been spending around £6 a month to keep on top of my hair colour. This might seem small but the accumulation over 3 years is over £200 - to me this seems ridiculous when I know this is purely cosmetic and there are better places my money could be spent.

The other thing that wound me up was the amount of waste I'd have left after touching up my roots. Although   there are root touch up kits available which contain less product for less money, they often don't come in the exact shade I need so I'd still end up with odd looking roots. I'd always feel inclined to use up as much of the dye as I could but I later found out from my hair dresser that this was in fact damaging to my hair and causing split ends. After some thought, some googling and a little experiment I came up with an idea for re-using hair dye which has halved my hair dye consumption and ultimately will save me money.

To complete this method the only thing you will need in addition to your box dye is a seal-able plastic container like the kind you would get from a take-away. To make life a little easier you could use a paint brush but this is optional.

When you normally dye your hair you combine two liquids, mix them together and then apply to the hair. The only different thing I do is combine the two liquids in a separate container but only use half of what is supplied. So I'm only using half the amount of product and keeping what I haven't used by securely sealing them ready for another use. Once my smaller amount of product is in the container I tightly seal the lid and give it a good shake. I then apply the mixture to my roots either using my fingertips or a paint brush. 

Step by step instructions

1. Open developer
2. Pour half of developer into the take-away container
3. Tightly close lid on developer bottle
4. Open dye
5. Pour half of the dye into the take-away container
6. Tightly close lid on dye bottle
7. Close the take-away container lid tightly
8. Shake it like a polaroid picture 
9. Take lid off
10. Use as soon as possible
11. Clean gloves and take-away container once finished ready for another use

This method is so simple and companies are cottoning on. L'Oreal recently released Mousse Absolue which applies this principle but in a more convenient container. Although it is slightly more convenient I don't think it warrants the £10.99 price tag when you could do exactly the same thing at home, using your usual hair dye, with something that most people would throw away. As long as you ensure the bottles are tightly sealed the products inside will remain stable, when I reopened mine after 6 weeks storage they were absolutely fine and worked perfectly on my hair.

I hope this has helped. Let me know if you use this method in the comments :)

Disclaimer: Please for the love of God, DON'T STORE MIXED HAIR DYE - it will react and explode. This is why home dyes come with separate bottles for the dye and the developer.