Wigs Making a wig look like it has "undyed roots"?

I'd use alcohol inks very carefully applied to put darker roots into a red wig- but ymmv depending on the inks, and the wig fiber. Ideally I'd *make* this wig- dip dye one end of my fibers, then make wefts, then build the wig.

 

you could probably use fabric markers! as long as they are specifically compatible with synthetic fibres, it should work?

 

I have stained a few wigs in the past, using acrylic paints and isopropyl alcohol, applied onto the wig with a brush. I have specifically also stained the hair roots to look darker, as if the natural hair color was starting to grow out, using that acrylic/alcohol method, as well as pastels and a fabric marker. The latter two I used on hard-cap wigs, because I make those with glue and I don't want the wetness of the paints and alcohol to make a mess of the glued parts.

Here's the most recent wig I made and added darker roots with pastels and heat. It's probably hard to tell, but the hair is all over the place color wise, as I had to use remnants from all my stash. I ordered more hair, but I was impatient and just made do with what I had. Leading to having a wig that's a bunch of different shades fo dirty blonde. DX The roots are darker IRL, then they appear in this photo (I suck at photos and lighting!). It was a matter of loads of layers and patience. I could probably add more, but I will probably just make a new one:


Here's what the wig looked like before stanning it with pastels, to make the hair darker and the roots even more dark-brown than the rest of the hair. It was a very pale mixture of blonde hair. It's not even close in these, to how pale it was IRL.


Here's the first wig I made for this dude, that was a stretchy cap wig with sewn wefts, so I stained it with acrylic paint diluted with alcohol. Applied to the root area before the alcohol evaporated. It's probably a more obvious darker root, but I can't do that to my hard cap wigs without worry of the alcohol melting the glue:


Here's an off-topic action figure, wearing a wig made mostly of the lightest hair I used for the top wig. That's how light blonde the hair was for the most part. So, using pastel does stain synthetic fiber quite a bit, it's just not that obvious if the whole hair is stained, like in my case. If you're only staining the roots (or any other small part/area of the hair), with pastel, you'll still get a decent amount of darkness, if the rest is not stained. I'm just impatient. ^__^;;

If the original fiber hair color is too dark, it might take several more layers of pain or pastel to get the darkness you need. However, those two materials work well for adding darker roots on synthetic fiber. Hope that helps, and good luck with your wig project! (: