I'm ready for a change. I want to go back to my natural medium brown and add some chunks of crazy color so if I have to change my hair back to natural quickly for a job, I can. Do I need to bleach out the purple first, or can I put a permanent dye straight over it? I have quite a bit of natural hair showing so it'll at least be easy to match the color :)

You should be able to dye straight over it since your natural colour is pretty dark. Probably best to go with a strand test before applying it all over though.

I agree that you should be able to go over the purple with a brown. Clairol makes a system called Second Nature that is designed to "correct" haircolor "errors" and that would probably work pretty well. A regular permanent color, as long as it's dark enough, would do the job, too.

You might also look into a brown/burgundy semi permanent color if the purple is still pretty dark. Maybe something like this?


Then you could gradually go a bit more brown as it fades and you get trims.