Red won't go away

I have naturally medim/dark brown hair with a considerable amount of red in it.  I have been colouring my hair for years-- mainly to an auburn colour or sometimes mahogany.  I want to go back to a cool dark brown, but the colour won't stay.  After a few days the roots become brassy & very light, reddish brown.  I just had my hair coloured professionally with a cool #6 & the colour is nearly gone after 4 days!

I'm not sure if it is my shampoo, water, or what.  Any advice? 

Thanks.

[QUOTE=mehna]I have naturally medim/dark brown hair with a considerable amount of red in it.  I have been colouring my hair for years-- mainly to an auburn colour or sometimes mahogany.  I want to go back to a cool dark brown, but the colour won't stay.  After a few days the roots become brassy & very light, reddish brown.  I just had my hair coloured professionally with a cool #6 & the colour is nearly gone after 4 days!

I'm not sure if it is my shampoo, water, or what.  Any advice? 

Thanks.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry to hear of your hair color meltdown.

There could be a number of issues happening ranging from your hair having a buildup from past hair colors which in essence cause any new color applied on top to slide right off or possibly you are washing your hair too soon after it's been color or using water that is too hot.  It could also be that you are using a shampoo that pops open the cuticle causing the color to run off.

Sometimes a hair color line, when used repeatedly for years, especially if it is applied to all of the hair and not just the roots, will coat the strands to the point that the only way to get a different color is to remove the prior color first instead of just coloring over the pre-existing colors.

If you wash your hair too soon after a coloring, it's possible to wash some of the color right off.  I personally recommend waiting up to 48 hours before washing newly colored hair.

Also, if you use hot water, this can cause a lot of the color to wash out. 

Avoid using volumizing shampoo since many of these are designed to pop open the cuticle and thus will also speed up hair color loss.

Based on your descriptions of what is happening at the roots I suspect the problem is related to coated strands or your hair is overly porous from long time coloring.

If a professional haircolorist just colored your hair and it didn't last longer than 4 days you need to go back and tell them what happened and asked them to look at what the underlying issues could be to why your hair is not grabbing the color.

Hope that helps.  Let us know what you find out with regard to your hair.

Chemical dyes are only going to cause issues with the body as well as having unexpected results from interactions with things like chlorine in the water, shampoo, air...it can be any number of things when it comes to chemicals.

The natural solution is to use henna hair dye. It's natural and actually benefits the hair while colouring it at the same time. Natural dyes are very unlikely to have changes due to external factors like the chemical dyes.