Home Hair Dye - Nice 'n Easy, but bloody useless.

I'm an idiot. Really, I am. Despite seeing many a  friend's failed attempts at dying their hair themselves, I naively thought that they must have done something wrong, and surely it would be fine for me. I would follow the instructions to a T, and be the exception, thus reinventing my look for £4.99. Oh how wrong I was...

I chose to use Clairol Nice 'N Easy's new Colour Blend Foam Dye - such the consumer I am, I believed all the hype - and chose the shade of Medium Golden Blonde (below).

Now, I wasn't expecting my hair to actually go that colour (being naturally a light brown), but was hoping for a bit of lightening and some golden tones. The instructions were easy enough to follow, although it took forever. Seriously, don't think you can get this done in half an hour. I have tres long hair, so had been worried that there wouldn't be enough dye, but thankfully that wasn't an issue. So far so good.

Right. Dye on, timer set for 25 minutes, time to kick back with Cosmo and let the magic happen... After washing it all out in the shower afterwards (and using the nice conditioning treatment that comes in the box), I really couldn't tell if it had worked, so was feeling a bit apprehensive about the final result. While drying my hair with my head upside down (for volume, naturellement), all I thought to myself was "Please don't have gone ginger! Please don't have gone ginger!" it's not that I have anything against ginger hair, in fact I think it's stunning! Natural redheads are really lucky to be so unique, and I love the look... on other people. My colouring just would not work well with red tones. Trust me.

I flinged my head back in my best "Because your worth it" impression and looked in the mirror. Crap. Well that wasn't what I was hoping for. Needless to say, my hair was not "medium golden blonde". Not even close. In fact, my hair hadn't changed much at the ends, but the roots had gone darker brown and auburny. Yes, that's one way of saying ginger. Sigh... I wasn't impressed.

It's not that it wasn't a nice colour, it was (note the use of the past tense - I have since been to my hairdresser, who is basically a God, and had some beautiful golden highlights put in. Alleluia!) but it wasn't the colour I wanted. I did get compliments from people, one of which is rather memorable: "It's a unique change" (decide amongst yourselves whether that's a compliment or not!

So overall, it was a bit of a mistake, but you've gotta try these things haven't you!? And hey, if it had worked, how awesome would that have been!? And for just £4.99!? (Reduced from £6.99 in Superdrug, folks). I can't say I recommend home hair dye... but there are people who do have success, usually when trying to go darker, FYI.

Has anyone else had any awful home hair dye failures? Or equally, any wonderful successes? I wanna know!