EDIT: for clarity regarding level of damage to hair.

Disclaimer: I am not a professionally licensed cosmetologist, so everything I say, you listen to at your own risk. However, I have been trained by a popular beauty supply store to ADVISE others on bleaching and or coloring their own hair at home, and I’ve done my own research. About three years worth. So, be advised, be warned, be smart. Please. The integrity of your hair is at risk.

If you’ve done your research, and all of this looks familiar to you, go ahead and skip down the section titled THE METHOD to see the process i’ve used to avoid fried, patchy hair.

For the sake of this post and time, I’m not going to cover every single thing about hair color and chemistry, but I’m going to go over some important stuff if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m hoping you’ve already done some research, either on google or youtube. If not, you might want to watch a few Hair Bleaching Fails from Brad Mondo’s youtube channel. He periodically gives tips and tricks during these and is actually licensed. If not, here’s a quick article that explains the process of bleaching that I think covers the basics that I’d like to add. 

[child with natural ~level 10-11 hair. About the lightest hair can really get without bleaching out all pigment to white]

So onto a few basics and info that I think is worth noting:

KNOWN TRUTHS OF HAIR BLEACHING:

To achieve  Platinum hair, THE HAIR MUST BE TONED. More on that later.

The thicker your hair is, the more bleach it can take, usually. If you have curly/kinky hair, it’s not necessarily impossible to bleach, but because of your curls and the tendency your hair has to frizz, bleach can be more damaging. (Or, rather, the damage is much more visible on curly/ kinky/ natural hair. Sorry ya’ll :/ ] 

Fine/thin hair is fragile. TAKE CAUTION. Test strand.

Test strands are your FRIEND. Please don’t bleach all your hair in one go before test stranding.

Bleach will damage your hair. There’s no way around it. You’re hair will never be the same. It will be drier, a little frizzier, more brittle, and it probably won’t hold a curl as well. You have to accept this, and realize that you will be spending a little more to mask the damage.

You cannot repair bleached hair. The process is permanent and so is the damage. All of the products that claim to repair are tongue-in-cheek. Many of them say “Reduces the appearance of damage of the hair” on the back. This is not the same as actually repairing the damage. As far as the Hair community knows, Olaplex is the only thing that reverses the hair damage, but it is expensive, it is only sold to professionals, and only yields the greatest results when mixed in with dye or bleach, when the hair is being chemically altered.

Bleaching is a PROCESS. This is why professionals will have you visit the salon multiple times before you get platinum/ silver. It’s healthier for the hair, it saves length, it stops your hair from looking like spaghetti- Which is why it’s so expensive. But you’re here because you don’t have patience, don’t lie to yourself. You’re probably also here because you want to save money. Which brings me to…

[ the usual bleached hair process from this site]

WHAT DO I NEED and HOW MUCH WILL THIS COST?

BLEACHING HAIR IS EXPENSIVE, no matter which way you go. Product breakdown, 2019 prices:

1 pound tub of powdered bleach (trust me. You want the tub. It’s cheaper in the long run): ~ 30  dollars. This tub will be enough to bleach a shoulder length bob (normal hair thickness) two or three times.

16 Ounce bottle of developer: ~5

Manic Panic/ Other brands: ~10 for one tub. One manic panic is about 4 ounces of color, which can color an above shoulder bob if you have normal/ thin hair. For thicker, longer hair, you WILL need more. So the price for this is anywhere from ~ 10— 50 dollars for first time application.

Brush for color: ~2

Brush for bleach: ~ 2

Bowl for bleach/ color (it can be washed and rinsed)- ~3-4

Toner (wella, most popular toner)- ~5

10 0r 20 Vol. Developer for toner: ~3

Shampoo Toner (less permanent than well, but also less damaging) ~ 12-15 dollars.

gloves: ~ 4

Hair clips/ ties to section hair: free if you have them: ~ 5

Protein masks/ deep conditioners: ~1 for the mask or ~ 10+ for the bottle.

(There are bleaching kits, like the manic panic one and “High lift” boxes of color at walmart, but I don’t recommend them as they usually are packaged with a 40 developer and not one box fits all. Plus, they’re way WAY more expensive than buying a tub of bleach if you have long hair compared to buying five boxes of Feria high lift or whatever at 10 bucks each. And they don’t contain as much product, so. YEah.)

Total: ~80. Sales tax (CA)= 5.60. That’s around 85 dollars MINIMUM if you have shoulder length hair. If you have longer hair, you WILL be spending much more than this. A salon visit will cost about 175+ for a bleach process alone, not including color or toner.

Does it sound like i’m trying to convince you to just go to the hair salon? I kind of am. If you’re going to spend this much money, you might as well just go to a professional, sit down in a nice comfy chair, and have someone else slave over your hair while you chillax. But I gotchu- you want to do this yourself! It sounds fun! Plus, the pride of doing it yourself? Addictive. And the potential to save money? Even more so. So okay. You’re buying all this stuff. Now the other question is….

[Loreal Quick Blue Bleaching Powder. Probably the most popular tub of bleach.]

WHAT DO THESE PRODUCTS DO??

Bleach powder: chemically lightens hair.

Developer: Activates bleach and opens the hair cuticle, allowing the chemical reaction to take place inside the hair strand and take out your natural color. A lower level developer is typically used to deposit color/toner back onto the hair.

Toner: Light glaze of color that tones hair, usually purple or blue. Why? Think of it in terms of the color wheel. Your hair will be some shade of yellow no matter how much you bleach, so you have to neutralize the yellow with a purple to create that beautiful silver/grey/ platinum/ white color. It’s just color science. This can be achieved with long term results with Wella or similar toners, or you can use a shampoo that’s purple colored for short term results.

The darker the purple OR the longer you leave on the toner, the darker grey it will get. Some people have the misconception that using a toner like Wella’s T14 will lighten their hair to grey which is not true. The developer lifts a little bit of pigment out, but it also replaces some with the purple- it doesn’t really lift :/ . To clarify: toner NEUTRALIZES the yellow hue in your hair. It’s like toggling the “hue” tool in instagram editor: you’re not changing the darkness or lightness of anything, you’re just changing the color a bit. 

Okay! So you have these products, you’ve watched some youtube videos, you have a general idea of how to apply it. But..

[Ahh, Brassy hair. The bane of our existence. Katy’s got about three different levels of hair going on here, all untoned and brassy. The hair at the crown of her hair behind the bangs isn’t bad- it’s a nice golden color. But the rest might be a little yellow/orange for some of us. ]

HOW DO I AVOID PATCHY/ BRASSY HAIR??

Test strand! Mix enough bleach using the ratio on the tub, it’s usually 1 parts bleach to 2 parts Developer. So get a tablespoon of bleach in your bowl (parts can mean anything used for measuring but a table spoon should be enough), mixed with 2 tablespoons of your Developer and apply it either to some hair you’ve collected from your hairbrush, or snip a few strands from the back of your head. Follow the rest of the directions on the tub. It is crucial that you test hair that is in the same condition that your hair is in now. Don’t use old hair. 

Okay, so you’ve done that, and the hair still is only a weird orange/yellow color! Can I bleach it again?

Technically, yes. But in a salon, they would make you wait a week or two, even a month before daring to touch your hair again. So I tell you the truth: bleaching it immediately will cause more damage then if you’d waited for a few weeks while using conditioning treatments like moisturizing and protein packets. Your hair will be more brittle, dry, and rough if you bleach again immediately.

But that’s your call. It will be more expensive in the long run, because you will probably purchase more expensive conditioners and more treatment packets to mask the damage.

Just for clarity, here is a hair level chart from Pinterest, showing toned levels of hair on the left and the underlying warm pigment of that hair on the right:

THE METHOD

Okay, so to avoid patchy hair when you bleach, I find that this method described below is time intensive but almost foolproof. It works best on hair that is longer than shoulder length, as hair this long can end up the patchiest. Like I said above, your hair will be damage, but using this method, it won’t be as bad as the “hair bleach fails” that you see on youtube. On virgin hair this process should yield hair that is a uniform color with minimal damage. After you’ve test stranded and found the appropriate amount of time that works for you, section your hair into four sections, buns is good. Now apply bleach to one section of hair beginning an inch away from the roots all the way down, making sure the hair is thickly coated in bleach on BOTH sides (bleach is thick and not as runny as water and will not “soak” into your hair like water. You need to make sure to get both sides or patchiness will ensue). Then go back up and do the roots. Now this is the important part!

LET THAT ONE SECTION SIT FOR THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU NEED. DON’T DO THE OTHER SECTIONS. Then rinse, shampoo, rinse, maybe shampoo that one section again until it is free of bleach, taking care not to wet the other sections. And repeat. Yes, I am advising you to bleach and wash your hair in sections. We can’t do our own hair fast like the professionals can, we just can’t. Bleaching it like this in sections will ensure that each section is bleached for the same amount of time, every time, ensuring a nice even color all around. Is it labor intensive? Yes. And if your hair is still only a level seven after you do all that work, you may have to do it again before you can tone. 

But this method will save your hair. Get your supplies, test strand, bleach and rinse in sections. You and your hair will thank me. I’ve done this, and it worked!... for the most part. I got cocky during the last section and waited an extra ten minutes longer than all the other sections, and wound up having to get a trim, but that was my fault. So don’t do what I did; go by the time you have used on your test strand for. Ever. Section. 

If your hair is already patchy/ has previous color tackle those sections first. I’m not guaranteeing anything for hair that has been previously treated- that’s a color correction and is very hard and expensive to do. This method works best on virgin hair, but not really on hair that’s already been colored. 

If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll try to answer them the best that I can. Good luck!