- The other day someone asked me: “Can I bleach my hair if I dyed it using permanent dye?”
The answer is YES, you can bleach it. But there are a few details you need to keep in mind before you do if you don’t want to end up damaging your hair.
First off, I want to say that bleaching dyed hair is a common procedure in all salons if you’re looking to change your color.
A lot of women use permanent dye on their hair and then after a while, they get tired of the color or they see another one that they like better, and that’s when they need to bleach their hair.
Is that your situation?
Don’t worry, you can use bleach on permanent dye to remove all of the color.
But, of course, bleaching is a chemical process that damages your hair, so before you do it to your hair, you need to evaluate your hair’s health:
- If your hair is dry or straw-like
- If it’s hard to detangle
- If you bleached your hair recently
Your hair is NOT HEALTHY.
You should not bleach your hair if it is in the conditions that I just described. First, you need to moisturize it and then you can bleach it.
- Do you know how the process of bleaching your hair works?
- Do you know which colors it removes?
- Do you know how to moisturize your hair afterward?
I’ll explain all of that in this article.
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How does bleaching your hair work?
Bleaching your hair is a chemical process that you do with a 20 or 30 volume developer and bleach powder.
Bleach powder contains ammonia, which generates a chemical reaction with heat to open your hair fibers to make them expel all of the pigment they contain.
Does that sound complicated?
It’s not, and you also don’t necessarily need to know all of the details.
I’m telling you all this you so you know why you can bleach your hair if you’ve already used permanent dye on it.
Bleaching your hair eliminates any kind of pigmentation in your hair, whether it’s natural or artificial.
If you bleach hair that you’ve already dyed, you’ll still be lightening your hair.
The goal of the bleaching process is to get rid of the color in your hair.
That’s why you need to be very careful when you bleach your hair.
- Don’t bleach your hair if it’s dry or damaged
- Once you’ve used the bleach mix on your hair, check on how your hair color is developing every 5 minutes
- Don’t leave the mix in your hair for more than 20 minutes
- If you want to make sure the mix bleaches your hair evenly, you can add a little heat, for example, with a shower cap
If you keep all of these details in mind when it comes time to bleach your hair, you shouldn’t have any issues.
What colors of permanent dye does bleaching your hair get rid of?
All of them.
Yep, you read that right: Bleaching your hair removes any color of permanent dye.
Of course, depending on your starting color and the color you want to get to, you might need more than one bleaching session.
For example:
- If you start with dark-colored hair and you want to reach a medium color, then you will be able to get there with just one session of bleach.
- But, if you want to reach even lighter colors, then you’ll need two or more bleaching sessions.
You won’t be able to get to platinum blonde in just one day.
I’ll leave you a color guide so you can get an idea of how many times you’ll need to bleach your hair.
- If your hair is very dark:
Black 1, dark brown 3: You’ll need to bleach your hair at least one time to get to brown 4.
- If your hair is dark:
Brown 4: You’ll need to bleach your hair at least 2 times to get to a light brown 6.
- If your hair is a medium color:
Medium brown 5, light brown 6: You’ll need to bleach your hair at least 2 times to get to a light blonde 8.
- If your hair is light:
Dark blonde 7, light blonde 8: You’ll need to bleach your hair at least once to get to lighter blonde 9 or platinum blonde 10.
Now, do you understand?
The number of bleaching sessions is the number of times you need to do it to get rid of the permanent dye in your hair.
To find out how many times you’ll need to bleach your hair, you need to consider both what color you currently have and what color you’re hoping to get to.
For example:
If you’re starting with a dark brown 3 and want to get to light blonde 8, then you’ll need to go through 5 rounds of bleaching your hair.
Really, that many? Yes, let’s look at the colors:
- From dark brown 3 to brown 4: 1 session of bleach
- From brown 4 to light brown 6: 2 sessions of bleach
- From light brown 6 to light blonde 8: 2 sessions of bleach
That totals up to 5 sessions of bleaching your hair to get to light blonde 8 to remove all of the dark brown 3 permanent dye in your hair.
Now, do you understand why you can’t go from black hair to blonde hair in one day?
It would be a complete and total disaster for your hair fiber.
And you should let at least 4 weeks go by between bleaching your hair one time and the next.
You can’t do one round on Monday and the next on Tuesday and next on Wednesday. It doesn’t work like that.
You need to give your hair some time to heal so it can be ready for the next chemical process you’re going to put it through.
How do you repair your hair after each bleaching session?
After each time you bleach your hair, you need to use a moisturizing treatment on it to help repair your hair fiber.
You can choose between a few different options:
- Heat masks: You use heat masks on your hair and leave them in for 20 minutes. You should use these kinds of masks twice a week until the next time you need to bleach your hair.
- Cuticle repairing products: These are keratin oils that close cuticles damaged by peroxide and ammonia. You should use them on the ends of your hair, and you don’t rinse out these kinds of repairing products.
- Coconut or argan oil: You can use one of these oils on your hair at night and rinse it out in the morning. Coconut and argan oil instantly repair damage from bleaching your hair.
- You can also use one of those kinds of oils three hours before bleaching your hair to minimize the damage it does to your hair.
- Leave at least 4 weeks between rounds of bleach; don’t bleach your hair more than once a month.
If you moisturize your hair and you leave the proper amount of time between sessions of bleach, then your hair fiber won’t suffer the kind of damage that would otherwise, unfortunately, end in having to cut off large parts of your hair.
Conclusions
Although bleaching your hair is a useful process for removing color, it can do some serious damage to your hair.
If you don’t have much experience with coloring your hair at home, I recommend going into a salon where they can help you find the best way to go through such big changes in your look.
