temporary hair dye

[topaz]

I started to ask the Internet this, but then I realized that my friends are actually way more awesome than the Internet:

How well do temporary hair dyes work? Do they wash out right away? Do they produce bright and vivid colors? Which brands are best?

ETA: this is a one-day thing, so super-temporary dye shampoos and the like are potentially fine.

If we were to apply more than one color--say, a mohawk with colored sides--is that likely to be way too complicated for an amateur to attempt on their first try? Would we want to use a semipermanent dye for that, rather than the totally temporary ones?

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

The real answer is that it depends. Different brands work better for different people. And my temporary, do you mean the ones that will wash out immediately, or the ones that wash out over a period of weeks/months.

Personally, when I was doing such things, I loved Manic Panic (partial to Vampire Red) and it does wonderful things in my hair, but obviously since my hair is very dark, it doesn't show up as brightly as it would on you. But the point is, even on mine, it *does show up*.

But other people swear by Special Effects [edited to put in the right name], which, when I tried it, did nothing at all in my hair. Literally, nothing. I ended up leaving it in overnight, and when I rinsed it out, not only was there no indication of even a spec of color, but you could still see the streaks of the previous color from months before.

So yeah, for me, MP lasted a long time, SE never took at all.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

So if you're looking for super-temporary, MP, SFX, or any of those are *not* the way to go. They can last for months, and will be very loud on your family's hair. I think the spray-on stuff would totally work.