Whether you're dealing with brassy or orange undertones, your best option is a color-depositing, blue toning shampoo. Yes, blue shampoo.
Toner doesn't really work on orange hair. I'm talking about a store bought product that you mix with developer that is labeled TONER. They will not remove orange tones from hair. It must be lightened to a pale yellow for toner to do its job.
Purple is one of the best colors to neutralize orange in your hair. Applying purple mask to orange hair is one of the best ways to get rid of unwanted brassy tones in your hair. However, there are many things to consider before deciding to fix orange hair with purple dye.
The Bottom Line: Use purple shampoo to tone yellow, usually blonde hair, and blue shampoo to tone orange, usually brunette hair. When deciding how to fix orange hair, you might try using a toner to get rid of the orange pigment. Toning neutralizes unwanted brassy tones to reveal a cooler blonde or light brown shade.
If you want to go to a darker brown, your stylist can find a color that will have cool, blue tones (you won't see any blue in your hair, however), that will give you the deep brown look you're going for, and cover up the orange.
Use Blue Shampoo and Conditioner
Specifically designed for brunettes, blue shampoo helps knock out brassy tones in brunette hair. Use a blue shampoo and conditioner duo like our Blue Crush line once or twice a week to keep your color cool and bright.
The Wella Color Charm T14 Pale Ash Blonde Hair Toner transforms brassy hair yellow and light orange hair. Gives a cool toned, silvery blonde result.
Blue shampoo is typically used for brown hair, as it combats the kind of orange, red, and copper undertones that make brunette hair look brassy. Its color isn't coincidental – blue is on the opposite end of the color wheel from the aforementioned undertones, which lets it neutralize these tones effectively.
Brassy brown hair happens in color-treated brown hair and refers to the orange and red undertones that appear in the base color over time. When hair is lightened, the pigments are stripped, which leads to these unwanted warm tones that come to the surface.
If you have any orange left in your hair, T14 is probably the best for your hair over T18. T18 is only effective if your hair is a level 10 or higher (purely yellow). Putting the wrong toner in your hair won't necessarily harm it, but it likely won't affect the color at all.
Even though ash blonde might seem like a light and delicate color, it will indeed cancel out brassy tones and orange hues commonly left behind by hair lightener and other hair color.
The most powerful toner against orange tones is the Wella Colour Charm Toner in 050 Cooling Violet. Used alone on blonde hair this gives a steel grey result. Used alone on orange hair this will really reduce the orange tones and leave you with an ashy dark blonde/light brown result.
Sun Exposure + Colour Fade
The sun's powerful UV rays can break down hair dye molecules, fading the cool tones faster than the warm tones. This can lead to the hair taking on a brassy, orange, or yellow tint.
To put it simply, brown hair can look red in the sun due to the UV rays having a “bleaching” effect on your locks, revealing the underlying red tones in your hair.
Hair toners work on red, brunette and even darker shades to slightly alter their hue or eliminate unwanted brassiness. You can also apply a toner for hair to virgin strands to enhance your natural color and boost shine.
Just as a purple shampoo neutralises brassy tones on blondes, using a blue shampoo on brown hair neutralises orange and red tones for brunettes.
Wella Colour Charm Toners should be left on for 30 minutes (this is called processing). Letting your process for the full 30 minutes is ideal, but check every 5-10 minutes or so to see how it's going. The Wella Toners turn a dark purple shade as they process, this is normal so don't panic!
Whether you're dealing with brassy or orange undertones, your best option is a color-depositing, blue toning shampoo. Yes, blue shampoo.
Blue shampoo
For lightened brunettes and dark blondes, a blue toner for orange hair—namely, blue shampoo—will be your best friend. As you can probably imagine, blue shampoo contains cobalt-colored pigments that help offset orange and other copper-leaning tones.
In darker colors, that often results in an orange, brass-like color. To put it simply, "Brunettes have underlying pigments of red and or orange in their hair," Kaeding explains. "When the hair oxidizes, those are the tones that want to come through."
To do this you want to use products with a blue base pigment that are dark enough to really cover and cancel out the orange. Above I recommended the Wella 7a or 8A with a mix of the Wella 050 Toner and that is definitely the way to make orange hair ash brown.
To avoid it going ginger or red then you must check what shade you are using. For example if the colour says golden, chocolate, mahogany, red, warm brown etc, these will all look 'ginger'. To achieve a rich colour, a basic shade must be added to create the depth (how dark it is).