Price: $29.99
Brand: JoBaz
What is it: Hair Colour Remover shrinks the artificial dye molecules in the hair, enabling you to simply wash them away. What’s more Hair Colour Remover does not touch your natural hair pigment so you are left with the colour which lay beneath your artificial shade.
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I’ve got mixed feelings on the JoBaz Hair Colour Remover. One the one hand, it does remove a bit of the colour in my hair, on the other, it dries out the hair and stinks while using, and continues to stink for a few weeks, every time my hair is wet.
This is the second time I’ve used the product, and I wanted to test it to see whether my first time (which wasn’t particularly effective) was indicative of the product. Unfortunately, it was the same in every way.
My hair is about three inches below shoulder height, naturally medium brown, but has been dyed auburn and chocolate brown (which comes out on me as black) in the past. The black is at the ends, with the red in the middle and about four inches of natural roots. I wanted to remove all that gunk and get it back to natural, without having to cut it off and start again.
The application:
The instructions say that you need to put the mixed product on dry hair, keep it on for 30 minutes and keep it warm. The warmth helps the mixture shrink the colour molecules in the hair shaft, so they’ll be ready to be washed out in the next part. You then have to rinse out the mixture for a minimum of five minutes, preferably ten. In a dry country like Australia, and with years of being told that showers are four minute affairs, this is really hard. You then apply the buffer, lather it up and let it sit for a minute, then rinse for another five minutes, or more, if you can stand it. Then there’s a second application of buffer, lathering and rinsing like a normal shampoo. Once all buffer is removed, you get out of the shower and towel dry. In theory, you’re then ready to re-colour your hair, should you so wish.
My tip for timing: get a sandwich bag with a zip lock, and fold the instructions inside (with the timing outwards, or write them on a piece of paper) and put a watch or stop watch in as well. This allows you to make sure you’re under the water for the required time. This is necessary to wash out all the loosened colour molecules.
The results:
The first time, I went for the minimum times so there was only ten minutes of rinsing. The result was a change in the black ends to a dark reddish brown, but no noticeable change in the middle bits. I assumed this was due to doing the minimum rinsing time. The second time, I rinsed for ten minutes the first time, and then another five minutes after the first buffer. The result was another lightening of the ends and in the middle, but nowhere near back to my natural colour. I think perhaps a third and fourth time might get it back to natural, however I’m not sure that I can do it, and that’s all because of the downside of the product.
When using the product, you’ll want to do it in a ventilated room, as it seriously stinks. Rotten eggs, or similar, it’s not a pleasant smell. Worse than the ammonia smell of some home hair dyes, and much more pervasive. Whenever my hair is wet, the smell returns, whether it is wet from washing it or from working up a sweat while exercising. The smell goes away when it’s dry, but I feel like I can’t go out in public while it’s wet, because the smell is noticeable. I’ve asked others if they can smell it, so it’s not just me being paranoid!
Last time, it took about four weeks for the smell to go away, although perhaps if I washed my hair more than twice a week, it would have gone faster. This time, I’m still in the stinky period, but I assume it will go in another two or three weeks.
The other nasty effect of this product is that it really dries out your hair and makes it like straw. The instructions suggest that you rinse out the second application of buffer and get straight out of the shower and dry off. I did that the first time, but the second time I used conditioner afterwards, which improved things a bit. When the hair is dry, the straw feeling is not so bad, but when it’s wet, it feels awful. Again this lasts a few weeks.
At almost $30 a pack, this is an expensive product for home use, particularly if you have to buy three or four packs to get the job done. That said, I haven’t investigated the price of doing it in a salon, so perhaps it’s a good price. While you probably could do a second application shortly after the first, I waited about three months between applications.
So overall, a mixed review. It’s a shame about the insane amount of rinsing – it’s four shower’s worth of water per application! I probably will buy more to get rid of the rest of the dye, and I’ll complain about the smell and the dryness, but getting rid of four doses of permanent dye was never going to be easy.
Hi Piaget, Glad to hear you had the opportunity to review JoBaz Hair Colour Remover. We appreciate all your feedback and wanted to respond to a few of your concerns. While the process can be timely, we like to reinforce that JoBaz Hair Colour Remover is a safe and cost effective way to remove an undesirable hair colour compared to expensive salon treatments.
It is important to note JoBaz Hair Colour Remover comes in two versions – Normal Strength which is for light/medium hair dyes and for those without colour build up (i.e. countless layers of hair colourant etc) and JoBaz Max Strength, for those who have used deep shades and/or have colour build up. We highly recommend using the correct version for your hair and following the instructions in detail to achieve the best results.
The science behind JoBaz Colour Remover is that it shrinks the artificial dye molecules in the hair, enabling you to simply wash them away. It does not touch your natural hair pigment so you are left with the colour which lay beneath your artificial shade. JoBaz takes you back to your lightest shade. It will return your hair to its natural colour if the artificial hair colour applied is darker than your natural level. For example in many cases it won’t return hair to its natural light brown hue but to the honey blonde it was before you may have dyed it deep brown.
Please note: Hair Colour Remover takes you back to your natural or lightest shade. It will return your hair to its natural colour if the artificial hair colour applied is darker than your natural level. If you have previously bleached or lightened your hair, Hair Colour Remover is unable to return the (original) natural pigment.
Remember: Some colouring products (both permanent and semi permanent) may contain high levels of peroxide which can lighten the natural hair colour and (in some cases) cause a warm shade to be revealed once Hair Colour Remover has removed the dark artificial pigment. In addition, some colouring products also contain very high levels of silicon which can melt and become trapped inside the hair in circumstances where extreme heat has been applied, thus blocking subsequent hair products from entering and effecting change.
If the hair feels dry or damaged so is not uncommon when using products that lift and swell cuticles when removing unwanted tones, impurities etc. Treating and conditioning the hair to smooth the cuticles will help.
Thanks,
The JoBaz Team
I have never tried a hair colour remover before, but I was sick of my two-tone hair so when the opportunity came up to trial this I jumped at the chance! I was sent the normal strength remover in the yellow box. There is a Max strength version for dark hair which may have been more effective fore my hair, which had been dyed black repeatedly for many years, but the normal version was not too bad. It lifted a lot of the colour out – my hair was jet black with about 8 inches of light auburn regrowth, and the black was lifted out considerably. It was still darker but more of a reddish brown colour. I have fine, waist length hair and this one box was just enough to do the coloured portion of my hair (around 18 inches long). Unfortunately using this product was a bit of a chore and it dried my hair out big time…read on for more details:
Directions say leave it for 20 minutes, however because my hair was so dark, after reading a bit on the web I elected to leave it for 45 minutes as it seemed safe.
Step one: mix the activator and remover together. This smelled pretty bad, like sharp sulphur, I guess lemony rotten eggs is a fair description! I was worried as I was in my little bathroom and made sure the door and window were open.
Step 2: application: You apply it to dry hair as quickly as possible, I found it pretty easy to massage in with my fingers and not too drippy or messy, it has a creamy consistency. I wrapped my head in gladwrap as directed and went to sit outside as it was Boxing Day and scorching hot here in Queensland
Step 3: Buffering and rinsing…and rinsing…and rinsing. Apply the buffer like shampoo, lather it up for a minute, then rinse for ten minutes! I diligently rinsed until my arms ached, it was quite a workout! You then apply the buffer a second time and lather it up, but then just rinse it out like normal shampoo.
Once the process was complete I left my hair to air dry, and while I wasn’t amazed by the difference it was definitely much lighter. I had dyed my hair black for years, so there is a heap of colour buildup in the lengths of my hair, and to me this did a pretty impressive job for a first time. My hair is quite dried out now though, it’s been a week and every time I wet it, it feels terrible, like straw, and I swear I can still smell rotten eggs. I have deep conditioned it twice now but it’s going to take some work to get it feeling soft again. Fortunately it’s only when I wet it that it feels coarse and straw-like, once it’s dry it’s fine, although the ends are a bit crispy. I have experienced this with hair colour before so I know it will recover!
Overall I would not hesitate to use this if I had a full-scale bag-over-my-head hair colour disaster, however for the time, effort and damage to my hair, I would only use it in an emergency.
I have been making drastic changes to my hair colour quite frequently for the past four yearsor and I jumped at the chance to strip back the colour with the help of the hair colour remover. My hair has most recently been blue-black and the max strength remover that I received worked quite well.
Initial thoughts: having just looked at the products and read the instructions it seemed fairly straight-forward; much like a packet dye. The smell of the product is a bit yucky but I didn’t find it as obtrusive as the chemical smell in most hair dyes.
Application: application is pretty straightforward. Pour one bottle into another, put the lid back on and shake, then apply evenly to the hair as you would a packet dye. Wait 30 minutes. When it came to the rinsing and using the buffer, I found it difficult to keep track of the different lengths of time to rinse and let the buffer sit etc., and kept having to reach out of the shower to grab the instruction leaflet or set a timer. Rinsing for ten minutes was a bit of a pain and I found I didn’t like the feel of my hair as It got to the end of the ten minutes- it felt almost sticky or too-clean.
Results and final thoughts: My natural hair colour is quite a dark brown but I had it lightened and dyed red a few years ago as we’ll as purple more recently and various brightly coloured sections, so I was sort of expecting a bit of a patchwork of shades as a result which I would have to re-colour to even out, however my hair turned out a sort of mahogany-red at the roots where I must have applied the most product, to a darker tone of the same colour at the ends where the black dye hadn’t completely come out.
While some stages, such as rinsing, were a bit annoying, the product did its job fairly well and wasn’t really much different to putting in a packet dye. I found after the final rinse my hair seemed a bit too clean but after drying it, I didn’t notice any of the dryness mentioned in the earlier reviews-my hair actually felt quite soft and smooth!
If i ever experienced some sort of colour disaster or just felt the need to strip back some of he dye in my hair, I wouldn’t hesitate to use this product again, and definitely recommend it.
Wow this sounds complicated!
I naturally had dark brown hair and some 20 years ago I started going grey. Over the years I continued to colour my hair with permanent brown and auburn hair dyes mostly only doing the roots however the build up has increased over time and my hair is almost black underneath and brown/auburn on top. I saw the Jo Baz colour remover product and thought I would try it to remove the colour build up and start fresh. I followed the instructions exactly and rinsed several minutes longer that the required time. My hair ended up a light reddish orange colour which wasn’t too bad but it was much lighter on top than the rest of my hair. My hair is quite long. I read the reviews about only using a semi colour over the top so a week later I used a dark blonde rinse colour that washes out after 3 washes all over my hair. I only left it in for 10 minutes, however, my hair almost went back to the colour it was before I used the JoBaz and never washed out at all. Because the grey/white was showing through badly, I did the JoBaz colour remover again last week (3 weeks after the first attempt)and the result was the same as the first time. However because of the unsightly grey roots, two days after using the JoBaz again, I used a dark blonde semi dye and just did the grey roots. When I washed the semi dye from my roots, I was disappointed to see that the rest of my hair must have grabbed the dye whilst rinsing and has returned to almost the same as it was before.
Can anyone help. I want to get back to a lighter colour but also need to do my roots. For 8 years now I have had to have my roots done every 3 weeks because of the grey/white so I cant’ just leave my hair for a lengthy time after using JoBaz. Is there some solution. I have purchased a can of light brown coloured mousse but haven’t used it as yet cos I thought this might do exactly the same as the other products I used.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
It sounds like your hair re-oxidised because the colour you used containt hydrogen peroxide or ammonia. These can cause the colour to return to the same as it was before you used the colour removed. Make sure to either redye the hair using a colour without these ingredients or wait to redye it for two weeks.
I Absolutely LOVED It.. I’ve been going crazy on my hair with colours lately, and wanted all the colours removed. I’ve tried other hair colour removers. This is the only one that has worked for me!! It didn’t leave my hair dry.. Was actually really soft.
My hair was near a dark brown/black!
And it brought my hair back too it’s natural strawberry blonde!!
LOVE IT!
I was very impressed by the product. My natural hair colour is black, but I’d bleached it twice to get to a platinum blonde and 2 weeks ago had dyed all of it with a permanent red hair dye. The dye faded to a weird pink/red and so I just wanted to get rid of all of it.
I wasn’t expecting jobaz to work at all – a lady at a salon told me if I used a dye stripper, it would only make my faded red turn orange and I’d have to bleach it to get it back to blonde.
Application: it was pretty straight forward, a lot like box hair dye.
Cons: it stinks so much. My hair looks a little dry, but I think it will calm down in a week (well, I’m gonna use treatments)
Pros (Result): my hair went to a golden honey blonde, no remnants of red at all. I’m happy with the result even though it wasn’t exactly the platinum blonde I was before but that didn’t matter. I dyed it red in the first place because I felt my hair was too blonde, so having removed the red dye and achieved a golden honey blonde I’m actually happy for this serendipitous result.