Sun-in + hair
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free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 8:39 am

I just got my hair hi-lighted a few days ago but the hilights are a bit too dark, I wish the hair stylist would have made them lighter for the summer. I am not going to get my hair re-hilited due to major damage my hair would face if it had to be bleached again. I was thinking about Sun-In to brighted up my color a bit. I've never tried this product before but would it work on dyed hair? Or is it a product only for non-dyed hair? What would be your suggestion?

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 9:14 am

I would NOT reccomend using it. It is so drying to the hair, I can only imagine what damage it could cause on hair that has already been processed. My recomendation would be to buy the shampoos that are for "highlighted" hair. Most really condition the hair, but "brighten" the highlights you put in. Many brands, I like the J Freida company stuff.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 9:29 am

You could try brewing up a strong cup of chamomile tea and putting it in a spray bottle. However you're going to have to spend ALOT of time in the sun with it. I do this and I have natural platinum blonde highlights on top of my already lightened hair (but to be fair my natural color is a strawberry blondish dirty blonde that highlights easily and I spend hours a day gardening). My mother has VERY DARK hair naturally and super dark skin... her hair is VERY long, almost waist length, she's used sun in for years and her hair is beautiful with light blonde highlights. No damage to her hair from it, however I do trim her hair quite often so it stays healthy. Overall sun in is pretty drying and probably not good for most people's hair but I have seen it work beautifully on some people.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 9:32 am

Btw, the best way I've found to apply these kind of lighteners is to pull your hair up into a ponytail. Spray with it like that and leave it in a ponytail. When you take it down you'll have beautifully scattered highlights that look natural.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 10:00 am

I've been meaning to try this. I have really long hair which I've been wanting to cut. So I was just going to do it on the ends that I'm going to cut off anyways to test the color. I wonder what % of hydrogen peroxide sun in uses. All it is is a mix of HP, aloe, lemon juice and chamomile. I tried making a mix of camomile tea, lemon juice and 3% hydrogen peroxide, put it on my hair and blew dry it and nothing happened at all. Maybe the tea diluted it too much, I think I will try straight HP.

Rhubarb extract is supposed to lighten hair too. And light vinegar rinses are supposed to add brightness. I heard of beer too, left on the hair in the sun. Sun in I heard can make your hair color look brassy but I think that's just on darker shades, if it's blonde already it probably won't. Makes sense cause darker hair goes through stages of redness before the color is stripped, so if the HP is not strong enough it will be a reddish strawberry blonde. That's what happened to me when I bought a 6% HP and put it all over my hair, I got strawberry blonde hair. It was pretty though. I decided to get highlights on top of it though to tone it down to more of a ash blonde look.

You can also use lemon juice and then go in the sun, although it's a bit drying. It works though I heard.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 10:09 am

I guess i wont do the Sun-In because i dont want my hair to be dryer than it already is. I have purple shampoo at home that i never use... should I use that to brighten up my hair? will it work?

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 10:31 am

BCgirl wrote:

I guess i wont do the Sun-In because i dont want my hair to be dryer than it already is. I have purple shampoo at home that i never use... should I use that to brighten up my hair? will it work?

I don't think the purple shampoo brightens hair, it mainly eliminates brassiness, which I guess sort of does give a brightening effect if its less brassy. Anyway, I just found this link for a free bottle of clairol's touch of sun (just like sunin) with rebate. Its worth it if you just want to try it. Its also good for anything else in the clairol blonding line. I'm thinking I'm going to pick up a bottle of the Touch of Sun for my mom and try it out myself probably. I've used sun in in the past and not had problems with it, but I may be in the minority it seems.
http://www.clairol.com/brand/blonding/offers/trymefree.jsp

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 12:20 pm

Sun In can turn your hair orangey as well. My hair is naturally med - light brown (atleast I think it is ... I've been colouring it for so long I hardly remember Very Happy

) and when I used it a long, long time ago ... it made my hair kinda orangey.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 4:34 pm

If you don't like your highlights, you should just go back to the sylist. Most won't charge for "fixing" something. Plus, I'm thinking it wouldn't take as much peroxide to lighten your already lightened hair, and you could ask for a conditioning treatment, or ask her what you should put on it to prevent overdrying.

last time I had mine done my girl toned them(colored them with semi-perm after the hair was bleached) , so they were dark at first, and now they're much much lighter. I thought it was a neat way to go about things, because it looked like I had a whole new dye job a month later. Laughing

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 6:08 pm

PLEASE DO NOT USE SUN-IN ON HIGHLIGHTED HAIR!!!!! Cannot stress that enough. It cannot lift enough to cut thru the orange tones and you will soooo regret it. Wash with a platinum shampoo for grey hair and condition, condition, condition. Having just paid mega bucks for highlights today, I Know what NOT to do.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 8:03 pm

Sun in isn't for highlighted or dyed hair. I agree 100% about the orange, too.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 10:53 pm

I definitely got the orange hair when I tried any of these - lemon, peroxide, sun-in. This was way back in the 80s when my hair was healthy and it really dried it out bad. My hairdresser calls my natural hair color now dirty blonde and it gets reddish highlights. One product I have used recently that I think helps brighten all tones of blonde is Aveda's shampoo for blonde hair. Actually, I think it is called chamomile. The platinum idea sounds good, too.

free skin care · Wed May 24, 2006 11:08 pm

I tried sun in about 10-12 years ago and my hair turned PISS yellow...that was on natural hair...I'd hate to see what it does on coloured hair

Go back to the salon and tell them it's not as light as you wanted. They'll probably fix it b/c they want you to be happy.

free skin care · Thu May 25, 2006 6:09 am

Yes, you should probably go back to the salon and find out if she toned over your highlights because as another member said, this toner will fade out leaving much lighter highlights in a couple weeks. If that's what she did then your best bet is to wait it out rather than damage your hair further. And keep in my mind whats best for your hair is not to lighten your new highlights but take new pieces of your hair and highlight those to a level lighter than the highlights you just got. Now this is going to leave you with ALOT of highlights, possibly a different look than you were originally going for. But if you decided you want the overall lightening effect than you should go for it. And its sad to hear sun-in hasn't worked for anyone but me or my mom. I really think that one of the reasons people complain about their hair turning orange from it is because they don't spend enough time outside with it. When I was younger my hair turned exactly like the ads for it, very beautiful and same with my mother's who's half mediterranean with olive skin and super dark hair. It really does depend what color your hair tends to pull though. Hearing all these bad experiences with it, you probably shouldn't go for it.

free skin care · Thu May 25, 2006 6:35 am

Oh I remember the days of using sun-in when I was a teenager, it's like dipping your hair in bleach!! So no not recomended for highlighted hair.
The best recomendation for the time being would be to spend some time in the sun, this should naturally highlight your hair.
Also if you are looking to fade the highlights then a strong shampoo should do the job.

free skin care · Thu May 25, 2006 9:03 am

thanks guys.... i will not use Sun-in on my hair! I guess I'm just going to wait it out a week or two and the toner in my hair should fade, and my hi-lights should brighten up

free skin care · Thu May 25, 2006 10:02 am

I agree - the sun-in is very drying and it always made my hair orange. Yuck.

Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:04 pm

I don't know why everyone is freaking out about sun-in. It clearly states on the bottle if you have darker hair it'll give an orange tint. I have naturally medium blonde hair with an ashy tone and I used sun in for like two years, it lightened my hair very nicely and made it look like natural highlights.

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