Red Locs

Eeek! My locs are red!

Dying my dreadlocks was a new experience but I'm relieved and impressed with the initial results. My hair feels quite soft (after conditioning with coconut oil) and perfectly healthy which was always my main concern.

It's been almost a year but I'm glad I waited. My locs needed to reach a good stage of maturity to endure DIY colouring. Through my experimentation I developed a clearer idea of how I wanted my locs to be as well as how I definitely didn't want them to turn be. My biggest concern of late was where and how to apply the ligthener/dye so that the colour worked with my complexion. I decided to use a semi-permanent colour because double processing (lightening, then dying) increases the risk of damage and I'm not an expert. I decided to place the dye quite away from my roots to help with the contrast and this way my new growth will hopefully blend better. The semi-permanent dye causes absolutely no damage and delivers bright results meaning I didn't have to lift my own hair colour very far. The downside of course is that it's not permanent. In fact this brand doesn't last long all. Washing my hair once a week is only an option if I'm willing to reapply colour very frequently but for now I happy to do it as it's much safer than a permanent dye.

The products I used:

And here's how it came out:

Now as far as this being my final colour I have to say I'm not 100% keen on how it turned out and here's why. When I lightened my hair I avoided squeezing the product in after reading into the debate for and against how much damage may be caused [to the effect of; bleach/dye can become trapped inside dreads causing shedding, breakage and hair loss in the future, therefore only coating the outer dread is advisable]. That said my results seem blotchy. I think with thicker dreads a lot more of the original colour can show through giving a sort of two tone effect:



By comparison some of the locs I'd dyed several times before (as above) are a more vibrant red. The others look almost burgundy/black.

I'm also not so sure this shade of red suites me in the first place but the best thing about semi-permanent dye is that in a few weeks it'll fade and I can try a different shade.

I am planning to go back over with the lightener just to even out the tones and also to redo my roots at the crown which didn't take so well because I ran out of product. Another plus for using a box lightener instead of bleach is that once the two components (lightener and developer) are mixed together, the chemical compound is designed to stop processing after a certain length of time. Sadly bleach (powder or liquid) will keep processing until there's nothing left so washing itr all out is vital.

TIP: As mentioned before in a previous post, to achieve the lightened colour (pics in next post) I did not use the bleach booster packet provided in the Dark & Lovely product above, so for anyone wanting to try it themselves, don't use it. You'll get great results and less damage without it and it's only really needed if you want to get to a true blonde. If you're throwing any other colour on top leave the bleach packet out.

Other than that I am super grateful that it worked out, I recommend those products to anyone with healthy hair and I'm so so excited to have red locs!

Next post goes into more detail about how I got these results and shows the results of me re-doing the process to get a even look. I took plenty of photos at various points during the transformation - Red Locs: The Whole (messy) Process.

Commenta welcome below.

DREADLOCKS ARE...

**Photography ownership is held with the blog account holder. DO NOT use without permission**