Bleach Baths

I'm just going to throw this out there: I am not a hairdresser, nor is my best friend. We have picked up our techniques and tricks from what we have learned from others on the world wide web and out and about. I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about hair and whatever the hell you're planning to do with it. I do what I want with my hair but I do my best to look after it as much as I colour and ruin it.

In July I bleached my brown hair and dyed it blue/green/turquoise/teal (whatever colour you want to call it). We dyed it once more at the beginning of September and since then I have let it do its own thing and fade as it wanted to. I then decided in November that I wanted to do something different with my hair when it got to the Christmas holidays and I saw my make shift hairdresser - my best friend, Kelly. I decided to try and speed up the fading process so used anti-dandruff shampoo, bicarb of soda and vitamin c tablets to help this. (I may do a more detailed post about these at another time).

I managed to get to a reasonably faded colour when it came to home time but I had decided that I wanted to get put as much of the green colour left as I could. I wanted a new colour and I had chosen purple. Putting purple on top of green was not going to go well in my eyes so I wanted rid of as much as possible with as little damage as I could manage. I decided on the bleach bath, a gentler way of stripping my colour out effectively by using bleach.

For my bleach bath I was using cheap shampoo from Tescos, 30 volume developer and blue powder bleach - both from Sally. We roughly measured 1:1 on bleach and developer. Then just a little less of shampoo after mixing the other two together.

Before

I had towel dried my wet hair and Kelly then applied it using the brushes we have. Afterwards we mixed up straight bleach and used it on my roots. I wrapped my head in tin foil and got on my day. I probably left it on to long but we had lunch and I have a habit of leaving these things on forever. I'm worried about damage but I want good results too. The diluted bleach was probably on for an hour.

I rinsed the bleach out before shampooing it. I then left on a hair mask/conditioner on the lengths and ends for a few hours, washing it out later that evening. My hair doesn't feel any more damaged than it already was. In fact, it feels rather lovely! I finished it off with Bleach London's Split Fix Serum on the ends and lengths when it was still wet. I'm not sure how good it is but I bought it so I'm going to use it, gosh darn it!

After

All in all I'm pretty pleased, it is funny when I put my hair in a bun as I have a blonde head/roots and a blue top knot. We haven't decided whether we'll bleach bath it again before we dye it but I'm pretty easy. It's slightly patchy but my hair always is, everyone always says how the like the different tones!

I try to let my hair breathe for a few days before I do anything else to it. Leaving this for 5 days before we dye it, just to give it some extra time to chill. And I'm also getting it cut to take the worst off the ends.

I'm sure I'll end up posting about my new hair colour as well. I'm getting into this blogging thing! I guess it's just because I'm doing things that are mildly interesting as it's the holidays! Oh well!


Merry Christmas and all that!
xo