Well two years of regularly dying my hair, experimenting with colours and brands had resulted in very patchy, dodgy hair colour. For about eight months I had dyed my hair variations of red and purple I eventually got fed up with it fading to a not so nice copper shade, attempting to use ash brown dyes to help minimise the copper tone. The build up of dyes resulted in me having mostly black, partly dark brown hair with light brown root regrowth and slightly coppery highlights and ends, so enough was enough and I was looking for an alternative to bleaching really not wanting to have dry stringy hair like a few of my friends have ended up with after using bleach.

So, I came across Colour B4 Hair Colour Remover Extra Strength which claimed to remove the hair dye molecules and leave the natural hair colour. It all looked good to me after reading a few revues on it, though I was still a bit sceptical, completely preparing myself for a disaster.

I bought the B4 from Boots for about £12, but I have just found that Tesco also sells it at a lower price of £9.98, whether it will be in stock in store I reckon would be unlikely though.

I used the Scott Cornwall Pre-Colour Shampoo which smells good (bit like tea-tree) but I am yet to see its full effect with hair dye, worked good with the B4 colour remover though. Application was simple, mix and apply to dry hair. I had my mum about to help me get the tough bits, but do be warned this stuff stinks like rotten eggs and the smell does stick to your hair, after the treatment if I stayed in one room for a while the whole room would stink of it. I applied it in sections as I would normally do when dying, using a wide toothed comb and my hands to get everywhere, then piled all my hair on top of my head and wrapped my head in cling film (great look btw haha), heated it up a little bit with the hairdryer then wrapped a towel around my plastic head. 50 minutes later I began rinsing and was a bit confused when the water was running clear, I though it hadn't worked, until I looked in the mirror. Even with wet hair I could see it was substantially lighter, orange in fact. At least the black was gone but was a bit of a shock, I now had dull orange hair, not even ginger just dull orange with a light brown tinge. Was a laugh to say the least! I was one to experiment but this colour had never been an aim of mine to be honest.

My hair was in good condition though, soft and pretty shinny if a bit more static than usual. I was desperate to get on with redying my hair even though it does say to wait a week I only managed two days as a ginger ninja, after my family finding it all way too funny for my liking, and I'm meant to be at an 18th birthday on sat and there was no way I was going to let my friends turn me into the punch line of every joke for the night haha. So I used Nice 'n Easy colour foam Light Ash Brown, it's TERRIBLE! DO NOT USE!!!! I am once again patchy black, brown and reddish roots as its not actually an ash colour with no red. So dissapointed after all the effort, time and money gone into the colour striping treatment. But I suppose at least I hadn't wrecked my hair after paying salon prices to remove the build up.

Sooo I will be using this product Colour B4 again tomorrow, then using another dye Friday night or Saturday morning, which probably isn't the best idea but times running out. I am determined to achieve nice, all one colour medium brown hair. I'm done with reds and purples too much hassle.

Overall, Colour B4 Extra strength is great to remove build up and dark colours, but if your experience is anything like mine you will be an orangey/ginger colour and smell pretty bad for a while. But it must be worth it if I'm planning on using it again!

Good Luck!