For the first time in many, many years, I’ve decided to dye my hair. My roommate and boyfriend also decided to dye their hair, so we’ve all been covered in chemicals and alternating between disappointment and optimism.

It’s been a fun ride, and I thought I’d share our findings!

Beyond the Zone On/Off Scalp Radical Bleach Kit ($9.99) – IFFY. My boyfriend and I both used this. He has dark, coarse hair while mine is dark and thick. We did his whole head and it came out somewhere between blond and ginger. I dipped my tips and at first, there was virtually no change in my hair, certainly not at the speed which my boyfriend’s hair had changed. I reapplied and saran wrapped the tips and got to where you see in this photo. I call it a gradient from brown to mac n’ cheese to blond-ish. It was fine, but I really expected more from a 40 vol. developer. On someone with hair that’s naturally lighter than mine, I could see this working really well.

Ion Color Brilliance Semi-Permanent Brights Hair Color ($5.29) – IFFY. My boyfriend and I tried THREE shades of this stuff, and our results were underwhelming, even after leaving the product on for twice as long as directed. The product is thick and it comes in a paint tube, which is what the product feels like. My boyfriend first tried Shark Blue, a greyed periwinkle blue. On his gingery hair, I expected it to come out somewhat green and it did, but the colour deposit was obviously nil. There were even spots of his hair that were left completely undyed, in spite of being thickly coated. We went back and got Purple, which is a much darker colour. It came out like a passable denim blue with a little purple shine, but it was still very spotty. I picked up Lavender. I tried heating my hair with a flat iron and cotton shirt (don’t judge my methods). Still, it came out brown with some slightly purple shine. While the colour deposit here was better, it still wasn’t amazing. (The lightest parts of my hair are just a dull grey. This photo is actually showing WAY more colour variance than there is in real life.) If your hair is shock white, this dye might look great, but a lot of reviews have it coming out more demure than the tube suggests. Some people seem to get great results from this stuff, so I’m just completely baffled. I get that we didn’t get a great colour because our hair wasn’t pure white, but very little dye worked its way into our hair, even with me heating it. That screams of a bad product to me, but other reviews rave about this stuff. What am I doing wrong?

Splat Semi-Permanent Hair Color ($7.99) – DO NOT BUY. This is a 2-step kit that includes bleach and dye. My roommate has extremely long but very fine hair. The product in the kit was plenty to cover her head. Unfortunately, the results were awful. She has been dying her hair a very long time, generally in different shades of ginger to dark plummy cranberry. She knew that the results with bleaching could be crappy. However, none of us could’ve anticipated how spotty and awful the bleach would be. The top of her hair turned radioactive bright yellow, while thick streaks running across her hair turned a darker shade that was odd. The length of her hair was reasonably even, but still with these random patches of darker colour. She was hesitant to put the “Fetish Pink” (UGHHHHH) colouring on such uneven hair, but it turns out that was the least of her worries. The box features pictures of bubblegum pink hair, but the dye is actually more of a hot neon that was spotty even in places where the bleach job was even. She’s been dying her hair for ages, so I trust her ability to get even dye coverage. I’m sure someone else would’ve found the hot neon appealing, but my roommate didn’t care for it, so she went crawling back into the loving embrace of…

Manic Panic Semi-Permanent Hair Color Cream ($10.49) – DO BUY. My roommate grabbed Purple Haze. Manic Panic is a vegan formula that’s relatively gentle on hair. Even over the uneven colour, Manic Panic gave my roommate a beautiful, even hair colour. Mixing with the Splat pink, this came out a really beautiful pinky purple. I also applied this to my boyfriend’s hair over the two previous dyes and it came out lighter than my roommate’s hair, but still a lovely shade. This particular dye made me think of a thick beet smoothie. Haha It’s easy to work with and it leaves behind a great deposit of colour, every single time. No heat required.