- A bleach bath lightens the hair from one to two tones and is less aggressive than a bleaching sesión. Instead, it’s performed with a moisturizing shampoo, a developer, and a bleaching powder.
- You can use it to lighten your hair slightly or to remove the remains of hair dye or toner.
- Although it is gentler than bleaching your hair, I don’t recommend it if it’s seriously damaged or brittle, as the chemicals can ruin it.
- After performing a bleach bath on your hair, remember to add intensive moisturizing treatments with keratin masks or natural oils.
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Bleach Bath Hair: Before and After (this is what your hair will look like after a bleach bath)
Do you want to find out what a bleach bath does to your hair to determine if you should get one?
In that case, you first need to know what you want to achieve in your hair with a bleach bath.
What do you want to achieve in your hair? Why do you think a bleach bath is the solution you need?
This way, you’ll know if a bleach bath is really what you need.
For example, if your hair is black 1 and you want to lighten it to light blonde 8, the bleach bath won’t work for you. To get to light blonde 8 from your black hair, you must lighten your hair seven tones.
The bleach bath only lightens the hair up to one or two tones.
In other words, if your hair is black and you apply a bleach bath, it’ll lighten to dark brown 3 at most.
Also, in this case, I recommend you ask a professional stylist about it. Bleaching hair to blonde requires several bleaching sessions, and monitoring your hair health after each session.
I’m sure you’re wondering right now.
What’s the difference between a bleach bath and bleaching?
This difference is very significant. The moisturizing shampoo provides hydration and nutrients. So, the process is less damaging for the hair while the developer and the bleaching powder lighten your hair.
Of course, your hair will also lose less color. So, while you can scale between three and four numbers with bleaching in a single application, the bleach bath scales one or two levels.
Although the process is the same in both, the shampoo in the bleach bath provides hydration during the process.
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When is the bleach bath recommended?
I recommend the bleach bath in two specific situations:
- To remove hair dye residue because you want to apply a lighter color. For example, you could have been coloring your hair with a light brown hair dye 5 for a long time and want to change to a light blonde 8. Of course, you shouldn’t apply a light blonde 8 dye to your light brown 5 hair because the dye won’t lighten the hair. Therefore, the bleach bath will lighten your hair two tones to blonde 7. Then, you can apply a light blonde 8 dye to your light base. That way, your hair will take the color evenly.
- Alternatively, you may need to remove toner residue. For example, if your hair is ashy and you want to go pearly, you can apply a bleach bath and then the toner.
- Similarly, you may want to scale some numbers. For example, if your hair is brown 4, you can achieve a dark blonde 6. Also, if your hair is blonde 7, you can achieve an extra light blonde 9.
When shouldn’t you use a bleach bath?
When you decide to apply any chemical process to your hair, you should decide with your head and not with your heart. That is to say, reason should prevail instead of emotion.For example, if your hair is brittle, extremely dry, and you can’t detangle it when it’s wet, you shouldn’t use a bleach bath even if the process is gentler and less aggressive than bleaching.
As you can imagine, your hair won’t resist the developer and bleaching powder, even if the product includes a moisturizing shampoo.
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In this case, you should ask a colorist to lighten your hair healthily. It’s as simple as that.
Otherwise, if you apply a bleach bath to seriously damaged hair, you can burn it, and lose hair.
Therefore, as a hairdresser, I recommend you apply a bleach bath if your hair is healthy and if you have some experience controlling exposure times to avoid damaging your hair.
How to check if your hair will resist the bleach bath?
All you have to do is prepare the bleach bath, apply it to a back strand of your hair, leave it on, rinse, and check how your hair reacts.
- If your hair doesn't break or split and you achieved the color you want or removed any traces of dye or toner, you can apply the bleach bath to all of your hair.
- Alternatively, if you notice that, your hair stretches or breaks when you detangle it, don't apply the bleach bath to the rest of your hair, and ask for professional advice.
How to take care of your hair after the bleach bath?
After the bleach bath, your hair will be a bit stressed, i.e. frizz may appear.
It's time to repair your hair. Apply moisturizing masks once or twice weekly. You can use masks with keratin or natural oils such as avocado or argan.
You can also include a leave-in conditioner in your beauty routine, which provides lots of moisture and nutrients to the hair.
Conclusions
Although the bleach bath is gentler than bleaching because it includes moisturizing shampoo, my professional advice is to ask for professional advice at a salon if your hair isn't in good condition.
Remember that the bleach bath is a chemical process that could ruin dry or damaged hair.
