My love for Lime Crime has been documented here before, and when I purchased their Unicorn Hair dye in Leeloo I also picked up Charcoal to give it a shot because, you know, two birds with one stone and all that. I was really excited to try this color because it's marketed specifically towards darker haired gals so you know the color pigmentation should be pretty intense! My natural hair color is obvious from my roots to about the top of my ear which is to say it's naturally pretty dark brown, while the rest from ear down has been bleached over time with multiple applications of 10 volume developer and PrismLites bleach in the purple shade. I've bleached my hair in the past using a 20 volume and toner the next day, so I know how my hair reacts with the 20 volume developer. I opted for 10 volume this time around as I didn't want to go so shockingly blonde so fast, obtaining more of an ombre sort of effect by going a little higher with the bleach each application. I don't apply it to my ends every time, either. Most people won't use 10 volume developer for anything more than giving a color application a little more oomph, but my hair has reacted well to this slow-and-gentle bleaching method. That being said, I had several shades varying from deep natural brown to a light yellow going on through my hair length prior to application of the Charcoal dye. Most of the Leeloo had faded out and I gave my hair a round with the bleach the day prior to brighten it up a little further. There were still some yellow tones left, but I figured that since it was intended to give color to brunette hair it would work out on the lighter parts.
The dye itself looks sufficiently dark and once it was on my hair I was quite excited. I'd been sporting varying shades of pinkish-orange-blonde since the spring and wanted to tone it down and go cool for the winter months. In the end I succeeded in a way, though the end result wasn't quite what I anticipated.
Before and after!
The photo on the left is from the first day after dyeing it, while the photo on the right is from about 2 weeks later. Initially I was fairly happy with the results despite them being a bit uneven, I'll attribute that to the uneven tones in my hair. After the first wash or two the green really became apparent, which I somewhat expected due to the reviews I'd read of their other grey dye. I didn't use any particular care when washing my hair so as to let this dye fade out on it's own a little more quickly and as it faded it went more minty which was kind of fun. I went into the process knowing it was entirely possible my hair would be left with a greenish cast so I was mentally and emotionally prepared for that potential, and having had shades of green in my hair before I know they work out well enough for my aesthetic to not be devastated if that were the case. I always recommend reading up on products before diving in so you have some idea of what you're getting yourself into.
Overall I was okay with the results- they weren't what I had initially intended but it wasn't a catastrophe for me to have green toned hair. It looked really nice the first day and did leave a nice tint all the way up to my roots, though it struggled to fully tint the lighter parts. To be fair, the dye is marketed towards darker hair, so it could be chalked up to user error. Leeloo worked so well for me and was so intensely pigmented that I went into Charcoal with a lot of optimism. It didn't fully live up to my expectations, and I still have half the bottle left so perhaps I'll try it again at some point in the future. It could be fun to use as a mixer to tone down and "smoke" out some of the other shades in my repertoire. Grey is one of the hardest colors to nail properly and since this one leaned green on me I was able to get more of a silver-tone to the blonde in my hair with a judicious application of purple, so I think mixing the two for an application could be lovely. Pink could be nice, too. There's some potential here yet so I'm not considering this one a total dud.
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Overall I'd give it 2.5 out of 5 hearts.
It definitely imparted color to my hair but it wasn't really the color I wanted after the first couple of washes. Still has potential.
XOXO,
NAU
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