Hair Dye: Failure Edition

I tried to dye my hair back to a color close to natural, which is a light brown, because my roots were starting to grow out.  I have only ever dyed my hair from lighter to darker colors in the past.  From natural to red, and then from red to black which quickly faded to a dark brown.  With my limited hair dye experience, I didn't even think about having to bleach it first.  The result?  It now looks like my hair is growing out from dying it dark brown and my natural hair color is a reddish brown.  It should be really interesting when my actual roots start to grow out; I'll have stripes of three different colors.  Then I'll have to dye it.  But for now, I have convinced myself that it doesn't look too bad, and G agrees.  Now for pictures that don't really show anything!  Have you ever tried to take pictures of the top of your head?  It's harder than it seems.

Before: the bottom part is still this color

After: I didn't take a picture of my roots at first so this picture isn't very helpful for comparison
Also, the lighting is really bad, so my hair looks like it is all the same color, but it's not.

The main reason it looks okay is that there were random streaks of reddish-brown in my hair after I dyed it black, and they're still there and about the same color as my roots, so it doesn't look completely awful.

Lesson learned: Always bleach your hair before going from dark to light.