Oxidation: Over time, hair can oxidize, especially if it has been previously colored or treated. This process can lead to a change in tone, often making brown hair appear more orange or red. Water Quality: Hard water, which contains high levels of minerals, can effect hair color.
Whether you're dealing with brassy or orange undertones, your best option is a color-depositing, blue toning shampoo. Yes, blue shampoo.
Underlying Pigments: Hair color consists of various pigments, including eumelanin (which is responsible for brown and black tones) and pheomelanin (which gives hair red and yellow tones). If your hair has a lot of pheomelanin, dyeing it darker can sometimes reveal those warm red tones.
Try a blue or purple toning shampoo
Blue or purple shampoo can help your client get rid of the brassiness in their hair.
Any time you go lighter than your natural color, you will bring up your natural underlying pigments.” Brown and black hair have darker orange and red underlying pigments than naturally blonde hair, which is why these hair colors tend to turn more brassy once lightened.
Blue shampoos contain blue or violet pigments; when you wash your hair with blue shampoo, these pigments are deposited onto your hair strands, and help to counteract brassy tones. Use our Blue Crush Shampoo and Blue Crush Conditioner to get rid of those orangey, reddy hues, and reveal cooler-toned brown hair.
"All hair contains melanin, and melanin is responsible for the lightness or darkness of your natural hair color." So when we lighten our naturally dark hair color, "the underlying pigments in darker colors are one of the reasons that hair can turn that orange brassy color during or after a coloring session."
Orange hair to light brown: Try using a medium ash blonde hair dye, as it can help neutralize the orange tone and achieve a cool light brown hue. Another option is to wait for the orange tones to fade and apply a light brown hair dye over it, making sure to choose a shade with ash undertones to neutralize the orange.
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.
Try using a toning shampoo containing blue, purple, or green pigments to remove the red, orange, and yellow tones. Secondly, always wear a hat or use UV protectant spray to prevent sun damage, which leads to oxidization.
Palladino adds that toners aren't one specific product, and you can't go out and just buy a “toner.” Demi-permanent colors, glosses, tinted shampoos, and conditioners can all be considered toners because they all contain pigments that adjust the tone of your hair.
If you're experimenting with a lighter blonde, silver, or platinum hair color, you'll likely want to use a purple toner. These contain violet micro-pigments that neutralize unwanted yellowness, resulting in a more brilliant blonde. Brassiness on brunette hair, meanwhile, typically reads more orange than yellow.
Blue toning formulas can help counteract orange tones in the hair.
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.
Get a blue wash/blue conditioner/blue shampoo. It's like purple shampoos, which are for platinum blonde hair because purple cancels out yellow. Blue cancels out orange.
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.
If you get a dye with the word Ash in it, this helps neutralize the red tones. Ash shades tone down red undertones, it doesn't create them (as another person answered here).
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.
With hot roots, the hair color near your scalp is usually redder, and can appear orange. This can occur with any shade of hair color, from blonde to brown, redheads, even black hair color.