Solfine Professional Hair Dye

I’m gonna make this a quick post for my readers – I will NOT be doing the instalment of Freaky Friday today (it’s 12:51am so I can call it “today”). Instead, I’ve got a beauty review for you all here. I’m not too sure how well I’d be able to do Mazel tov Monday either as a regular segment. Blogging has become too demanding as I’ve been pushing my own expectations pretty high recently. If you haven’t noticed, they are getting detailed and long just about one topic – this post itself is almost 1500 words. They’re mini-essays, even though they don’t look it. 

I also take a mass of photographs and it’s really time consuming (taking photos, processing, uploading, writing). If I disappear for a bit, it’s because I’m on temporary hiatus. I certainly do not want to lose any readers, so I’ll aim to blog maybe once or twice a week from now on, but nothing fantastic. I have to put my priorities straight – my priority should not be blogging, but studying – so just bear with me. I only need to be away until early November – and after that, believe me, I’ll have all the time in the world to write even better posts. Until then, I’ll be publishing whatever stuff I have in my drafts. Sorry and thanks for reading!

For those who follow my blog, you would have known that I got a haircut. Once you get a haircut you’d want to also dye your hair.

So also for those who follow my blog, I had this ridiculous gradient running through my hair; it was because I got it dyed at a salon – then the next time I dyed it I think it was with Palty (which did work but didn’t lighten my black roots enough so you could see a gradient instead). This time I decided to go for these professional hair dyes. I admit, C tested the waters out first and verified that it actually worked, so I decided to try it.

I wanted to play it quite safe  by choosing the 20 volume (6%) peroxide developer.

For those who have been complaining about colour not showing, it’s most likely because your standard developer in your hair dye box (Revlon, L’Oreal, Palty, whatever) is probably too weak. The standard developer is only 10 volume (3%) which means you want to add a bit of a tint or colour to your hair. 20 volume is for lightening 1-2 shades, whereas 30 volume is lightening 3-4 shades. 40 volume I think should be available but I don’t remember seeing it on the shelf. It’s for really making your hair blonde and it’s not healthy – you’d most likely use a bleach rather than a 40 volume developer, I think.

You can buy these at Priceline. I got these at the World Square Priceline.

The developers and the colours come separately, so you buy them separately. The developer was only $6, but the colour was about $12. Still a bit cheaper than the “Professional” kits, but bear in mind you don’t have a conditioner, bottle or a pair of gloves.

I really tried to play it safe and I got a colour named “Tobacco” which appeared to be a darkish ash brown. I didn’t want anything too light because I didn’t want my hair going orange – if it’s anything I hate most, it’s the idea of having orange hair. I don’t care if my hair is brown but not visibly brown – as long as it’s even, one colour and not orange, it’s all good.

What I did was recycle an old hair dye bottle which came with a hair nozzle applicator. If you don’t have one of these, you can probably use a plastic cup, paper or foil bowl and mix it. You don’t need a bottle. I kept this bottle because these applicators were new at the time (this is a Korean hair dye) so we decided to keep it. It seems fairly common for Asian hair dye. I haven’t bought any hairdyes from the supermarket in quite a long time so I don’t know what they’re like.

You can see I’ve been doing drawings and I even drew up a schedule – needless to say, I’m behind on my own schedule because of some things happening beyond my control U_U

What I did was get a jar, measure 65ml of water (the colour tube is 65g, which needs to be mixed with 65ml of developer – note that this bottle of developer is 200ml, which is good for about 3 applications for medium length hair like mine). I’d tell you to mark a line on the outside of the bottle, but luckily for me, my bottle already had lines (if you look on the left of the bottle) so I knew where to fill up to. Usually it’s the bottom line.

If you are using a plastic cup, make sure that you do NOT squeeze the  cream into your cup unless it’s a very big one, because there is a LOT of cream – it filled up the entire bottle of the one I used.

The bottle was pretty useless though, and soon we just took the lid off and scooped out the dye from the bottle, because it was so thick it wasn’t really coming out of the nozzles well ^^;; This started to happen about halfway. So my verdict is the best way is probably a bowl or something.

With 20 Volume developer, you only need to wait 30-35 minutes total. I probably left it for 35-40minutes but it didn’t matter because I was dyeing it a dark brown, not a light brown. I probably should have left it in for longer so it’d probably go a bit lighter, but it’s alright.

The  “Tobacco” colour was really strange as it started to turn purple (it’s a good thing – it means it has blue hues in it, which emphasises ash and counter acts any orange or red tones – so no orange hair!)

The formula is thick, so it doesn’t drip, and it doesn’t smell too bad. I didn’t get a fruity smell, but overall it wasn’t a bad smelling product.

Rinsed it out and added a treatment to it. I am not very good at drying my hair, and my hair is naturally frizzy. For the record, it makes your hair quite dry. I’ll be doing plenty of treatments in the weeks to come.

The best part is that the colour appears not to bleed after it’s rinsed, which is pretty amazing if you think about how when you dye your hair it seems like no matter how much you wash it, colour’s always coming out.

I was freaked out that the colour would turn out purple, but it was just a nice brown. The images look a bit red, but hey, I have black hair. This was as ashy as I could get it. If I knew about colour correctors I would have bought a tube of blue and added it like mad to the dye. So the brown I got wasn’t terribly ashy or distinctively ashy, but it was a solid brown. I could tell the dye tried to not leave anything orangey behind. Overall, I’m impressed. 40 minutes ish and I get a good brown. That’s not too bad considering my hair doesn’t colour well.

Overall there was PLENTY of dye for my hair. There was still even a bit more in the bottle. My hair is now evenly coloured so there is no gradient. My hair is dark brown, but who cares? I just didn’t want the gradient.

I’m keeping the developing cream for another 2 applications further down the track. It means I need to go buy the colour but who cares – it’s a good quality dye and it’s better than the ones in the boxes since it actually works. If you need something even lighter, go for the 30 volume developer!

Other things to note:

• My hair is generally the colour of the “Indoor with Flash” colour. I woke up the next morning and I could see that my hair was definitely brown and not black. It’s really nice colour – I’d probably use it again, if not I’d go for one of the lighter ash colours since they won’t make your hair orange (they contain blue hues).
• I experienced no stinging, burning or itching on my scalp. This is amazing because Palty made my scalp itchy/ burn a bit, but this stuff didn’t do anything to my scalp. Do a patch test though (I didn’t but you should) in case if you’re not compatible with this product.
• Best dye I’ve tried so far! Definitely will be using this in the future. Forget Prettia or Palty. This stuff doesn’t smell that strong, doesn’t burn or itch and dyes evenly and colour comes out. What more can I ask for? Oh – perhaps for them to start releasing a colour that’s blue purple, not red purple

Until next blog!