Originally Posted by
Katja
What kind of bleach works for you and your sister?
My sister tried dying her shoulder length black hair light ash brown and it didn't work, I told her it wouldn't but she didn't listen and started crying when her black hair wouldn't change color. So I went to SALLY'S BEAUTY SUPPLY and bought the following things :
CLAIROL PROFESSIONAL 7TH STAGE CREME HAIR LIGHTENER - 3 Bottles
(7TH STAGE bleach lifts up to eight levels that's why I use it)
CLAIROL PROFESSIONAL LIGHTENING ACTIVATORS - 6 Packets
LOREAL OREOR CREME DEVELOPER IN 20 VOLUME- 16 Oz Size Bottle
I always have a plastic tint bowl from the beauty supply, a beaker, 3 tint brushes, and a wisker to mix everythig together.
I mixed the following :
2 Bottles of Clairol 7th Stage = 4 ounces
8 Ounces of Loreal Oreor 20 Volume Creme Developer( you have to double the amount of developer when you are bleaching ) (make sure you use you beaker to measure the right amount of ounces)
4 Packets of Clairol Professional Lightening Activators
and mix them all in a plastic tint bowl. I mix it really good with the hair color wisk ( you can get one from the beauty supply), mix it until creamy.
I applied it mostly to her ends first because the black hair dye has been there the longest, so I need it to turn blonde more then any other part of her hair, I applied the bleah half an inch away from her scalp so that way she wouldn't have uneven colrs in her hair. It was very tedious work, I couldn't just blob it on her head, I workred with my tint brush and comb, seperating each section of hair and saturating the hair with bleach. I was done putting on the bleach after about 45 minutes ( yeah it takes that long with long hair ) then we put a plastic cap on her head so that way the bleach would keep working and the cap would hold the heat from her head.
We left the bleach on for about 1 hour, we could have left it on longer but we didn't.
When she rinsed out the bleach it had a dark golden/orangy blonde color.
Then to eliminate a majority of the orangy colors, I toned it with medium ash blonde.
It helped eliminate a majority of the reddish tones and made it look more sublte, we came out with a honey blonde color, dark gold blonde.Toning is not coloring, it is more like evening out what the bleach has done, and toning bleached hair does not damage the hair. For toning you can use a demi permanent (no volume developer,has it's own developer made for that line) available at the beauty supply or a deposit only( using a 10 volume developer), they're both very similar.
you have to keep in mind, that when you bleach hair that has been colored in the past you will always have yellow/red and gold tones to it because it is not virgin hair. So all you can do is to tone it with and cool tone rather then with a warm tone color.
For bleach you can use a 10, 20 30 or 40 volume developer, the only difference is that a 10 will develop slowly letting you take you time in applying and keeping your eye on it, 20 volume develops a little faster then 10 volume casuses a little damage to your ends , 30 volume develops faster then the 10 or 20 volume but it may damage the hair very badly making the end stretchy and like ruberbands, and last but not least the 40 volume is just going to develop faster then 10, 20 or 30 volume and will defenitly damage your hair for sure. So if you want to bleach out black hair you need to have patientce it may take hours, it almost always takes hours, and the more patient you are the less damage your hair will have, people us a 30 or 40 volume developer to speed up the process of bleaching because they don't have the patientce to keep their eye on the hair while it goes through it's different stages of the bleaching process, but it only damages the ends and dries them out, so when you plan on bleaching prepare yourself for a lot of work, a lot of patientce. In alomst 4 hours I took my sisters hair from a level one black hair to a level 7 dark blonde. I hope this was helpful to you. If you have any questions just let me know.