Why Your Hair Turned Pink When Dyed Blonde? How to Fix it Now!

Okay, a booboo happened.

You were trying to dye your hair blonde and it became pink instead.

What happened? Why did your hair turn pink when you dyed it blonde and how do you fix it?

Please don’t worry or stress out – it’s fixable.

Now if you want to keep the pink or you don’t want to color-correct it at home, I will provide other options towards the end of the post.

Just read on.

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Why did my hair turn pink when I dyed it blonde?

It’s very simple, but there are multiple scenarios, so I will go through all of them.

1. You wanted to dye your red hair blonde, but it turned out pink

If your hair is red, and you tried to lighten it using bleach or another method, you can end up with pink hair if you didn’t use enough bleach or a strong developer – this is because it wasn’t strong enough to lift all the red color out of your hair.

So light red basically equals pink.

2. You had dark brown hair or gray hair but it became pink after dying it blonde

This means that your undertone is pink and when you lightened your hair or tried to dye it blonde, your undertone came out.

This is a chemical reaction that sometimes happens when you’ve bleached your hair but the bleach hasn’t had enough time to penetrate your hair and when you washed your hair, the underlying pink pigment came to the surface.

So, let’s discuss how we can get rid of the pink color or at least color correct it.

How do you get the pink tones out of dyed blonde hair?

1. Tone it with green

Look at this color wheel.

Notice that pink is the opposite of green in this color chart.

This means that if you color your pink hair – green, you will nullify the pink and it will look blonde.

It’s basic color theory and if you understand this, you can actually fix quite a lot of hair color mistakes.

This is the same principle we use when we want to get yellow color hair more white – we use a purple toner to cancel the yellow tones and make it look more somber or ashy blonde.

color correct your hair with green tones

Okay, class is over.

So, how do we use this theory to remove the pink color?

Just use a green shampoo/conditioner like this or a green semi-permanent hair dye like this to cancel or nullify the pink tones in your hair.

This is the fastest way to remove unwanted pink tones from your hair and you can use this method to nullify any unwanted color in your hair – just use the color chart as a reference to see which color cancels out the color you have.

Please be careful when choosing green color shampoo or conditioner. If your hair is light pink or the pink is barely noticeable, use a light green dye or shampoo to balance out the pink properly.

Now if you are using green shampoo, please be careful. Keep it on for no longer than 10 minutes and keep checking your hair to see if the pink color has canceled out before washing it out.

Once you notice that the pink color is gone, wash out your hair.

Always keep checking your hair every 10 minutes (whether you use the green shampoo or the green dye) to make sure that your hair doesn’t go green – that is something you don’t want!

2. Use a clarifying shampoo

This is by far the safest method to nullify or cancel the pink tones in your hair and I always suggest this because although it takes a bit of time, it’s safe and doesn’t damage hair as much as bleach.

If your hair has pink tones (that aren’t too harsh or too dark and prominent) this method will work.

Clarifying shampoo doesn’t work as well as bleach obviously but it does lift a bit of color and will lighten your hair enough for you to color it another color you like.

It works even better if the pink tones are from a hair dye as compared to your natural underlying pigment.

If you want better results, just crush 3-4 vitamin c tablets with the shampoo and leave it in your hair for 15-20 minutes before washing it off.

Don’t leave it on for longer because Vitamin C can be very harsh and cause skin irritation. It will also extensively dry your hair.

This will remove the pink hair tones almost completely or lighten it to the point where it’s hardly visible.

3. Use more bleach

If you’ve just used bleach, then please wait 1-2 days before you do this because this will severely damage your hair.

Waiting 2 days will give your hair enough time to repair itself or lower the cuticles so that it can go through another bleaching process again.

Red and pink dyes are the most difficult colors to get out and if your hair was red before or turned pink after bleaching, it means that it just needs more time under bleach to lift the remaining pigment left behind.

If your hair was brown, it means that the bleach didn’t have enough time to remove all the color and the underlying pig/red hue has just resurfaced – that’s all it is.

Since your hair is pink, it means you don’t have to use much bleach.

Just leave the bleach in for no more than 30 minutes before washing it out.

If your hair now looks yellow or orange, you will have to tone it before coloring it again, otherwise, your new color might not take as well.

4. Keep the pink

I want to cover all the choices you have since sometimes people decide to make the best use of their situation.

If you’re tired of experimenting with your hair and you like the pink, you can keep the light pink hair color, or you can color it pink over this.

Read this post to learn how to dye red-dyed hair pink by reading this post.

5. Find a color correction expert

If all these methods sound overwhelming, just go to a hair care salon that specializes in colored hair (make sure you read all the reviews on Google first) and book an appointment to see a color correction expert immediately.

They will color-correct your hair beautifully and you can rest easy knowing that you are in good hands.

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