Everywhere you look online there are horror stories about bleach and fried brassy hair and videos of hair falling out or breaking off. Since I began dyeing my hair almost three years ago, I’ve never considered bleaching it to change the colour, why would I do that to myself when I could just let the colours wash out and fade!
But what about when the colour doesn’t fade? When after 6 weeks of washing and scrubbing at the colour, it’s still vibrant in places and patchy in others and you have an event coming up that you’d like to look your best at. It was time to brave the bleach and switch my hair up, give myself a new look as I finished my second year at university and head into the summer months.
Having used and loved Bleach London products before, I purchased their bleaching kit which promised to lighten my hair by 7 shades. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, two packets of the powder to one bottle of developer; they even give you the bowl and brush.
Unlike a lot of bleach mixes I’ve seen, this mix is very thick and forms almost a dry paste, so you have to work fairly quickly. I Started from the underneath as that was where the manic panic dye was still boldest, and worked my way up through the layers of my hair to where it was most patchy and faded, covering my roots last as they were growing back through my natural blonde and needed the least amount of lightening.
Before Rinsing the bleach out
After 40 minutes this was what my hair looked like, streaks of pink among platinum blonde, I was convinced it would wash out to be sort of peach coloured.
But, I was wrong! When rinsing the beach out, a lot of the visible colour I’d seen washed out of my hair and I was left with white blonde hair with a sort of halo of pastel pink.
After Bleaching
If I was trying to achieve platinum blonde I would have needed one more bleach around the remaining pink and I was there! This bleach did an amazing job at getting rid of the majority of the colour all in one use, I would highly recommend this bleach kit! I thought my hair would be crunchy and feel like a bag of Doritos after bleaching it, but the condition is mostly fine. My hair needs a trim, but aside from that, the condition is pretty intact.
I then went on to mix up the new colour. As its heading into the summer months I decided to try out pastel hair, perfect timing as Schwarzkoft just released a brand new range of Live metallic colours ranging from bold to pastel. The application was pretty standard for most box hair dyes, I worked the colour in from root to tip this time to try and blend in the uneven tones in my hair. The dye starts a dark blue colour and then gradually as it develops gets lighter, going to this almost purple tone, where you first start to see the metallic hues.
After 4o minutes develop time this is what I was left with, and I am absolutely in love with it! The dye admittedly didn’t cover the pink halo I was left from bleaching, but it did blend the colour in so it looks like a gradual fade or an ombre sort of look which I am more than happy with.
This dye is great for naturally very light hair colours or platinum blondes, but defiantly will not show up on darker hair. If you have dark hair and really love this colour, never fear, bleach really isn’t what it used to be, its easy to do and pretty difficult to mess up if you buy a good kit and follow the instructions. If I can do it, and I’m REALLY not a professional, then anyone can!
Thank you for reading this post, subscribe to get a notification whenever I post, there will be plenty more crazy colour hair posts where this one came from! Also check out some of my other hair posts to see my colour colour journey.
Cloe-without-the-H 