Hey, so I know you can mix colors from the same brand, but what about other brands, like manic panic and special effects?


I was also wondering that if you can mix a color with toner to make it lighter, to make a darker shade, do you mix it with black??

Any input would be greatly appreaciate, thanx

It's okay to mix Special Effects with Manic Panic, Raw, Directions, Punky, etc. but it is not okay to mix any of those with a boxed permanent dye like L'Oreal, Garnier, Clairol, etc.
Toner can be used with some colours to make them lighter, but a cheaper method is to just use conditioner instead.
I don't know much about making colours darker though, adding a bit of black sounds logical but I may be wrong about this.

Adding black seems a bit like it would make the color mucky.

But I mix SFX and MP and Raw together sometimes and the color comes out fine.

There's not problem in mixing those brands like Directions/Manic Panic/Special Effects/Crazy Colour etc. but the results can be really unpredictable due to the consistency of the dyes. For example, Manic Panic and Crazy Colour both have a really gloopy texture. That makes it really difficult to mix with something thick and smooth like Directions. Not only physically but the colour results can be patchy.
So, usually I'll only mix within the same brand for the sake of consistency.

True. I was going to mention something about that but I got lazy. MP doesn't dye as well as thicker dyes like SFX or Raw so it does come out a bit crazy.