In waiting for my first TL piece, and my current piece needs some colour as it has lightened up and it's not blending as well as I need it. The colour ordered from TL was a #3. I was in the drug store and looked at product but it's hard to figure out what matches my own hair, considering its on my head and there were tons of samples

For those of you with a TL #3 colour, what off the shelf product and colour would you recommend? Some brands use numbers, some names etc.

thanks

Hmmm so many views and no replies. Ok if I went with back2natural, which one would I get based on my system being a #3?

Just try coloring both your own hair and the piece hair with the same dye. I would just go a slight shade darker than your natural hair color, that way you can assure the two match. I just use ammonia free off the rack cheap hair dye. Try to only leave the dye on the piece for 5 minutes as they take color pretty quick.

Try Back2Natural Med Ash Brown. The rule with B2N is to get a shade one step lighter than your actual hair shade for best results. You can always leave it on longer or use it more than once to get a darker color if you need to.

My favorite off the shelf hair color is Perfect 10 from Clariol. It's specially formulated to be less harsh than most hair colors, and works quicker (10 mins). It never dries my hair out. Nice & Easy by Clariol is another good one to try. Stay away from L'Oreal haircolor, it will dry your hair out badly.

I always do a "strand test" by selecting a small area (about the size of a pencil) on the edge of the piece at the very back. Mix a small amount of developer with the color 50/50 in a small plastic container. Let it process on the selected hair strands about 3-5 minutes. Rinse and check color by drying the hair. Repeat the above steps if necessary to achieve the desired color depth. Make sure you record exactly how long the color is actually on the hair each time. Add those times up to get your total processing time (example: 3 mins + 3 mins = 6 mins total.)

Put a plastic bag over your styrofoam form and pin the piece down. Apply color starting at the back bottom and work your way around to the sides going up to the top little by little (1/2 inch sections). Apply color to the front and top last. (I use a small 2" paint brush to apply the color, then comb it through the hair.) Be careful to keep the color off the knots & the base at all times. Carefully rinse the color away from the base; base side up, to keep it from staining the base.

Just an update. I found Nice & Easy for $7 at the drug store. The colour was a 117D I believe. Anyways very happy to report I applied it twice and the colour is amazing! I did find though that by the time you get around the sides, the back has been sitting with the dye on it. Total time was probably 6 or 7 mins. I had a pretty fine toothed comb which next time I'd get a wider one as while I was combing it through it would pull alot of the dye out and leave it on the comb so I'd have to wipe the comb on the hair to get it back on there.

Glad everything worked out well for you LP. Using a wide tooth comb works very well and will cut your application time down quite a bit. (It's not really necessary to get the color all the way down to the knots anyway.) Each time you color the task gets easier. BTW, you don't have to mix all the color at once; mix color and developer 50/50. I usually squeeze 2-3 colorings out of one kit.