What's the Best Hair Dye to Use in 2026? Your Guide to Vibrant Colored Hair

I went jet black in college with a box dye from CVS and two weeks later decided I didn't want to be jet black anymore. The amount of damage I did to my hair trying to get that color out is something I'm still a little mad about. I had to cut four inches off. Four inches.

Because I didn't understand that permanent hair dye means permanent, it doesn't wash out, it doesn't fade, it grows out or you pay someone a lot of money to fix it. That was a $200 color correction at a salon and my hair still felt like straw for months after.

There was also the time I was trying to go auburn and I got distracted by my phone and left the dye in way too long. I don't even know how long it was honestly it could have been 45 minutes it could have been an hour. When I rinsed it out and looked in the mirror the color was not auburn.

I don't know what color it was. It was some shade that doesn't have a name and I had to go to work the next day looking like that. So between that and the jet black thing and a couple other situations I'm not going to get into I have been through enough to know what works and what doesn't when it comes to hair dye.

The difference between semi permanent and permanent hair dye matters more than you think

Semi permanent hair dye does not go inside your hair strand. It sits on the outside, deposits color, and over a few weeks it washes out. No ammonia no peroxide no developer. If you hate the color you shampoo it out over time. Nobody has to fix anything.

Permanent hair dye actually changes your hair from the inside which is why my jet black situation required a $200 salon visit to undo. If I had used a semi permanent that day I would still have my four inches of hair and $200 more in my bank account.

Adore hair dye

Adore semi permanent hair color is $5.99 at our stores and it has a following that is borderline cult-like. I'm not exaggerating. I have regulars at our Good Hope location who buy three four bottles at a time because they rotate between colors and they refuse to use anything else. The color range is wild, everything from Jet Black to Sapphire Blue to this periwinkle shade that I saw on a customer once and I stopped her in the store to ask what it was.

No ammonia no peroxide no alcohol. Customers tell me their hair feels softer after using Adore which I was skeptical about at first but the formula does have conditioning ingredients so it actually makes sense. It's a hair dye that doesn't make your hair feel like it's been through something traumatic. At $5.99. I spend more than that at Starbucks without thinking about it.

Here's what I always warn people about though. If your natural hair is dark and you put a bright Adore shade on it you are not going to get the same result as the girl on TikTok with the vivid electric blue. That girl bleached her hair first. On dark hair Adore gives you more of a tint or a sheen in that color. The blacks and browns and reds work great on dark hair without any lightening. The fashion colors need a lighter base to really pop.

Each bottle is 4 oz. Short hair that's plenty. Anything past your shoulders get two bottles. I ran out of dye halfway through my head once. I was walking around my apartment with one side darker than the other trying to figure out if I could stretch what was left. You cannot. Just buy two.

Bigen hair dye

Bigen permanent powder hair color is $5.99 and I don't think there's another product in the store that has more loyal customers than this one. People who use Bigen hair dye for their grays do not switch. Their moms used it. Their aunties used it. The brand has been around for over 60 years and that is not an accident.

It's a powder that you mix with water. Tap water. Not developer, not peroxide, water from your faucet. The box is small enough to fit in your palm which throws people off when they first see it but you need barely any product per use. Customers with short hair tell me they get two sometimes three applications from one box. At $5.99 that's maybe $2 every time you do your hair. Try getting your grays covered at a salon for $2.

The color it gives you is natural looking, not that flat one-dimensional thing where your whole head is the exact same shade and it's obvious you dyed it. Bigen gives you something that just looks like healthy hair. The range is more limited than Adore because it's built for natural colors not fashion colors. Blacks, browns, chestnuts. No neon pink. This is the product for people who want their grays gone and their hair to still look and feel like their hair.

Bigen will not lighten your hair though. Deposit only. If you need to go lighter that's a separate process. We carry Clairol BW2 Powder from $2.99 and Superstar Cream Peroxide Developer from $1.99 for that. If you've never bleached before I'm going to be real with you, look up some videos first or ask somebody who has done it because uneven bleaching is how you end up with orange patches and that's a whole separate problem to solve.

Which one do you need

Experimenting with color, want something temporary, don't want to damage your hair. Adore. Need your grays covered with something gentle that lasts and costs next to nothing. Bigen. Not sure which situation you're in. Come talk to us. We carry the best hair dye around!

Where to find all of this

Number 1 Beauty Supply. Three stores, Marlow Heights, Good Hope and Brentwood. Or number1beautysupply.com, free shipping at $59.