Palty Nama Caramel Latte

I was applying for a job a few weeks ago, but say whaaaaatttt, they required a photo with my resume! I’ll elaborate more on that in another post, but long story short, I reluctantly surrendered my bleached locks for a more socially-accepted brown.  Today I will be sharing my results with the Palty dye that I'd used. It actually didn’t turn out as planned…

Please be forewarned: herein you shall see more pictures of my homey sans-makeup look, complete with unwashed and messy hair! Please don’t judge meee~~

Without further ado, here is the Palty Nama Caramel Latte hair dye! I got mine at HanKook Supermarket for $10.99.

Result swatches from the back of the box:

Hair dye mix and hair comb applicator:

Instructions (in Japanese), conditioner, and plastic gloves:

Scent: There is definitely a bleach scent, but not at all unbearable.

Irritation: It itched my scalp towards the end of 30 minutes. The bit that I got on my neck was quite irritating within 10 minutes.

Consistency: I found it to be a bit runnier than the Palty bleach and L’oreal dye that I had used before. I didn't expect it to be so drippy, so I accidentally flung a bunch on my mirror! Oopsie~~

Bottle Amount: I have chest-length hair, but because it was runny I was able to cover all my hair with just one box. It was a thin layer though, so I used another half-box to thicken the coverage.

I should note that I have notably thinner and less hair compared to most Asians, although it’s still more and thicker than many Caucasians' that I’ve met. I hope that didn't sound racist, I didn't mean it that way!

Quick Intro About My Hair History:

Before I show you the results, I thought I’d explain a bit about what my before hair was like: For the past 1.5years I have been using Palty Hard Gold Bleach to bleach my hair myself. Each time it came out a little uneven (nothing wrong with a little dimension in your hair color! ><) After a few cycles of bleaching, I acquired several shades of blonde within my hair. It'll be interesting to simultaneously see results for multiple shades! :D

(All these pictures were taken under natural lighting. I tried to pick the most accurate ones, but because of the light reflection off my hair, there's still a bit of discrepancy. Hopefully there are enough photos that you can get the gist of it!)

(▲This is the most accurate picture of my overall hair color.)

Overall: Overall, I'd say my hair now looks like a caramel brown with streaks of dirty-blonde going through my short layers. Here is a picture of my whole head from above:

Since my hair color was uneven to begin with, there is a lot of variation in the results after dyeing! Let's take a closer look at each part:

Roots: It did a great job lightening my dark roots to a very nice light brown color! Quite like the box swatch!

Under brighter lighting, it looks like a light caramel-brown. In indoor/dimmer lighting, it looks more like dark chocolate brown:

Short Layers: My short layers were the parts I had bleached the most, so they were the lightest. Before, they were a brassy gold and now they are dirty blonde (for the most part). Ultimately, I wouldn't say my blonde got much darker persay; but in hindsight, the dye did remove a lot of the brassiness. The actual shade varies slightly with lighting; sometimes it looks more golden and other times it looks a bit grey-ish:

Long Layers: It may be hard to tell in the Before picture, but my longer layers were originally an orangey-brown. Now they are light brown, with a slight a touch of orange:

In the next picture, you can compare how it shows up in sunlight and in dimmer lighting (under the shadow of my forearm):

Here, the arrow points at the color that is most accurate of how my ends look in real life. Again, it's a light brown with a slight orange-ish undertone:

In conclusion, this dye did a great job lightening my dark roots to a nice medium brown, but it did little to darken my bleached blonde hair, except reducing the brassiness. 

Damage: Did you notice how messy my and unhealthy my hair looked in the after photos? They were taken the day after. Even though I had conditioned, my hair was sooo unbelievably brittle, dry, and knotted!! It was so bad that I just left my hair alone (hence the messiness). I'm assuming it was from the dye, since I did nothing different. Thankfully, after a few days of conditioning my hair went back to normal, but I do have split ends now... 

Hope that helped! Thanks for reading!

Question: What Palty dyes have you tried? How were the darkening/lightening abilities?
I might have to dye my hair again...Any recommendations on a nice dark brown color? ^.^