9 of the best DIY boxed dyes that can give you salon-standard colours and revive your bleached locks

We are willing to spend a few hundred dollars at a salon just to brilliantly hued, head-turning locks.

Here’s a little secret for those with less cash to spare: you can DIY with boxed dye and achieve Instagram-worthy coloured hair at a fraction of that price! The only prerequisite? Your hair is already bleached.

Here are nine boxed dye recommendations that can give you amazing colours and revive bleached hair that is already fading out to an ugly ramen-yellow.

1. L’Oreal Colorista Temporary Hair Colour

Are you sick of sticking and committing to the same ol’ colour for months and months upon end? A temporary dye that lasts an approximate two weeks, this is perfect for the fickle-minded.

Love this colour? Get another bottle of pink! Sick of it? Change it up with a trendy pastel blue or whatever your fickle heart tells you to.

Bonus: There’s also no ammonia in these temporary dyes, so if you have damaged or brittle hair from the numerous dye and bleach jobs you’ve done over the years, but still want to maintain your colourful locks – this is ideal for you.

L’Oreal Colorista Temporary Hair Colour retails at SGD16.90 and is available at all Watsons, Guardian, and seleced NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage outlets.

2. Revlon Colorsilk

Probably the cheapest one on our list (that you can find in local stores, anyway!), this box hair dye only costs a measly SGD9.90. Sure, it doesn’t have your crazy coloured greens, blues, and purples on the list, but if you’re looking to go platinum blond, regular blond, or some form of ashy blond or brown – then this is your best bet.

And hey, you know what they say – blondes have more fun. Well, we don’t know how true that is, but saving a few pennies in the process to get your awesome blonde locks surely can’t hurt!

Revlon Colorsilk retails for SGD9.90 and is available in all Watsons, Guardian, and selected NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage outlets.

3. DixmondSG

If you’ve been to SCAPE Underground, you’ll probably have seen the rows and rows of hair dye shops there, offering to give you your dream bleached, colourful hair.

DixmondSG is one of the more popular stores there and they offer an array of DIY hair dye, including colours like ash grey, rose gold, lavender ash, and ash pink. Each box only goes for a rather affordable SGD12.90.

There’s even an SMS service that DixmondSG provides if you’re stumped on how to go about DIY-ing your own hair. So if this is your first time doing yourself, just give drop them a text for assistance.

Each DixmondSG hair box dye retails for SGD12.90 each and is available at Scape Underground, Toy Outpost, Hako, The Box Societe, and online.

4. La Riche Directions Semi-Permanent Hair Colours

Another name that you’ll see mentioned often for coloured box hair dyes, La Riche offers hues of your wildest dreams.Think florescent, neon greens and yellows (yes, the very same colour of your nostalgia-tinged Primary School highlighters), or a relatively tame lilac purple or ashy blue.

With 30 over colours in stock, you could literally transform your locks into a rainbow.

La Riche Directions Semi-Permanent Hair Colours retails at SGD18.90 on Shopee, SGD11.90 on Lazada, and SGD9.50 on Qoo10.

5. APRILSKIN Turn-Up Hair Colour Treatment/Cream

Yes, that APRILSKIN. You know, the one with the Magic Snow Cushion everyone talks about.

It turns out that APRILSKIN also has semi-permanent hair dye, and we’re talking about We’re talking about wild K-Pop idol-esque shades like turquoise, hot pinks, rose golds, and ash greys.

APRILSKIN Turn-Up Hair Colour Treatment/Cream retails at SGD9.90 on Lazada and SGD6.99 on Shopee.

6. Manic Panic Semi-Permanent Hair Colour Cream

One of the most popular DIY boxed dye around, Manic Panic Hair Dyes offers a huge array of brightly coloured dyes to choose from, from overly saccharine cotton candy pink to bold and wild bright orange. They tint your locks into a very vibrant tone, which is why there are so many raving reviews on them.

Manic Panic Semi-Permanent Hair Colour Cream retails at around SGD16.90 on Lazada and SGD19.90 on Shopee.

7. Lime Crime Unicorn Hair

Okay, first of – just how cute is that packaging?! ‘Dyed and gone to unicorn heaven?’ We don’t know about you, but we sure did!

Offering a stunning array of colours from periwinkle purple to bright reds, and from minty pastel green to millennial pink, this hair range is also vegan and cruelty-free, so go ahead and dye your hair guilt-free, knowing that no animal was hurt in your journey to pastel heaven.

Lime Crime Unicorn Hair retails for SGD22.14 (USD16) and is available on the Lime Crime official online store.

8. Arctic Fox Semi Permanent Hair Colour

Arctic Fox is another big name in the market of crazy hair dyes and definitely has to be on this list.

Stumped on how to achieve the hair colour of your dreams? Pick from the 20 dye bottles they have and experiment by mixing and matching various colours to achieve what you want. Colours they offer include neon yellow, bright orange, moody blue, and pastel pink.

P.S. They also donate 15% of the profits to animal charity so getting one of these bad boys is literally ‘dyeing’ for a cause.

Arctic Fox Semi Permanent Hair Colour retails for SGD11.06 (USD7.99) and is available on the official online website. 

9. Good Dye Young Semi-Permanent Hair Colour

Anyone who’s gone through an emo phase, no matter how brief, has probably looked up to Hayley Williams at some point. Or at least her ever-changing hair colours, at the very least!

A brand by Hayley Williams herself, you can bet that the hair box dyes will be as crazy colourful as herself. Dye your hair an unapologetic mermaid blue-blue a la Katy Perry, or mix up a bunch of colours you like and surprise yourself.

Good Dye Young Semi-Permanent Hair Colour retails at SGD24.90 (USD18) and is available on the official website online.

Bonus: A hair hack we discovered

Here’s a fail-proof way of dyeing your hair. Put a few drops of dye in your regular shampoos and conditioners, and leave the conditioner or shampoo-dye hybrid sit in your hair for about an hour or so to let the dye settle into your locks.

And when you wash your hair off the shampoo-dye concoction – voila, new, stunning freshly coloured locks!

Not happy with the result? Just repeat the process a few more times or spread it over the next few days until you’re satisfied with the colour.

Products we recommend? Hair products like Miss Dear Hyusu’s range of colour shampoos and hair masks, or oVertone’s range of hair tinting products.