In the hair color world, when we refer to bleach, we are always referring to the mix of developer and bleach powder, which we then use to bleach hair.
What bleach does is extract the natural pigments from your hair so then you can use a new, much lighter color on your hair.
What would happen if you mixed the dye with the ingredients that make up the bleach mix?
Adding bleach powder to dye doesn’t make any sense, because all you’d get would be a sort of paste that wouldn’t do anything except damage your hair, and you’d end up having to throw it away.
There is only one ingredient that you can mix with the dye, and that’s the peroxide. It’s also sometimes called developer or oxygenized water.
- With dark colors, you mix the dye with a 10 volume developer.
- When it comes to medium and dark colors, you mix the dye with a 20 volume developer.
- And with extra light colors, you mix the dye with a 30 volume developer, while you should mix a 40 volume developer with the very lightest colors.
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Let’s clarify this point: What are you hoping to do by mixing the bleach mix with dye?
- Are you looking for a lighter color?
- Are you looking for a less intense color?
I have all of the answers, so stick around because I’ll tell you:
- Why you should only mix the dye with developer
- How to lessen a dye’s brightness
So after reading this, you’ll only have two options: try a strange homemade mix that will make you waste your time and damage your hair or get a lighter or less intense dye the right, safe way.
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Why you should only mix hair color with developer
In order to make sure there is no confusion, and everything is completely clear, from this moment onward, I want to prohibit you from using the word “bleach” if you’re talking about lightening dye.
Because like I said before, you use bleach mix to remove the color from your hair. That is why you shouldn’t mix it with dye.
What we will do is replace that “bleach” with developer.
Do you know why?
Because the developer also lightens hair, without needing to mix it with bleach powder.
Now you should mix different “volumes” of developer with different kinds of colors.
- You should mix the darkest colors with 10 volume developer.
- You should mix medium and light colors with 20 volume developer.
- You should mix the lighter colors with 30 volume developer,
- You should mix the colors with the most lightning power, with a 40 volume developer.
But what happens if you mix the dye with a stronger developer than what’s appropriate for its color?
What will happen is that your hair will lighten, but your roots will be lighter than the rest of your hair. And that would be a true disaster.
That’s why you should not use a stronger developer than what is necessary for the dye you’re using.
If you were to use a dark brown 3 dye with a 30 volume developer instead of a 10 volume developer, your roots would turn red and the rest of your hair brown.
What can you do then if you want to lighten the dye?
You have two choices:
- Go to the store and look for a lighter dye out of the options that the brands that they have offer.
- Or, lessen the dye you want to use’s intensity. And you don’t do that by using a stronger developer, but rather by increasing the proportion of developer in your dye mix.
Do you want to know how to do that?
If so, keep reading because I’m about to explain.
How to lessen the intensity of the dye to make it lighter
If you want to lessen your color’s intensity to get a more delicate color, what you need to do is use a more diluted dye.
How do you do that?
You probably already know that in order to dye your hair, you need to prepare a mixture of a tube of dye and developer. And the ratio of this mixture is always 1 to 1, meaning equal parts of both ingredients.
So, if you have a 50 ml tube of dye, you should mix it with 50 ml of developer.
So, in order to lessen the intensity of the dye, what you need to do is double the amount of developer. I repeat, double the amount of peroxide, not increase the volumes.
For example:
- If you want a light brown 6, you’ll need a tube of light brown dye and two containers of developer.
Because in order to lessen the intensity of the color, the proportion is 2 to 1, meaning you’ll need double the amount of developer as compared to dye. If your tube of dye is 50 ml, you’ll need 100 ml of developer.
That way, you’ll have a less intense color that will perfectly cover all of your hair.
You always need to avoid increasing the volume of the developer because the volume of the developer is only good for opening your hair cuticles to make the dye penetrate your hair fiber. That means that the volume doesn’t affect the color of dye at all.
So, if the color you’re going to use requires 20 volume developer, you shouldn’t use a higher volume developer. What you should do is increase the amount of 20 volume developer when you mix it with the tube of dye.
Also, if you increase the volume, all you’ll end up doing is lightening your base color and the result with will be a completely different color than the one you wanted to get.
Conclusions
You shouldn’t ever mix bleach mix with dye since bleach’s job is to get rid of the pigment in your hair and not deposit a new color.
What you can mix the dye with is the developer. If you want to lighten a color, you should increase the proportion of developer in the mixture but maintain the number of volumes that correspond to the color you chose.
If you’re supposed to mix the dye with a 20 volume developer, you should always use that number of volumes, but increase the amount of developer in the dye mix.
That way, you’ll get a lighter, less intense color, which probably is what you’re looking for.
Do you think that you’ll get the color you want by increasing the proportion of developer in your normal dye?
