Hiya, I’m 20 weeks after my last chemo and absolutely desperate to colour my hair. My hairdresser says to wait for 6 months post chemo, but she did put a semi perm colour on for me a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately the grey is already coming back thro so I’m so looking forward to getting a nice permanent colour.
Has anyone coloured their hair with a permanent dye before the 6 months deadline, and if so did it turn out ok? Xxxxx
Hi Murphy, I coloured mine after 3 months using an organic vegetable dye, it was fine and didn’t cause me any problems x
Hi Murphy, my sister also used a vegetable dye which worked great for her. Once her hair started growing back she had a lot of grey so started colouring it pretty much as soon as there was enough there to colour, there’s no way she would have waited 6 months. She used to buy hers in our local health food store xx
I would wait 6 months at least before using permanent hair dye because your hair is more brittle when it first grows back. I used Level 1 (temporary) hair colour and it seemed to cover the grey very well for over a month. Although it gradually faded with time, it still looked much better than grey.
Level 2 (semi-permanent) and Level 3 (permanent) use much harsher chemicals than level 1 hair colour and so-called “organic” or “natural” hair colours do actually use similar chemicals to the regular hair dyes so they aren’t any milder. I’ve summarised the information I found in a post on my blog a couple of years ago: iameclectica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/colouring-hair-after-chemotherapy.html
I ended up using temporary hair colour for about 2 years after chemo because I got on well with it and prefer to use milder chemicals. Only in couple of months have I started using semi-permanent hair colour and then only occasionally. I also did some photos recording my hair colouring “experiments” in the months after chemotherapy so you can see how the colour lasted and what sort of fading I got. It seemed to depend on exactly which shade I used see: iameclectica.blogspot.co.uk/p/chemo-hair-regrowth_16.html