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These 10 Bleaching Mistakes Might Ruin Your Hair

You will never want to risk ruining your beautiful hair by attempting a home hair lightening treatment and seeing your hair become orange or green instead.

However, even individuals with extensive expertise in bleaching and dyeing hair sometimes end up making mistakes.

Learn what common hair bleaching mistakes you should be aware of to bleach your hair successfully without causing any damage.

Hair Bleaching Mistakes

Here are 10 typical bleaching mistakes at a glance that amateur and expert hairstylists make.

  1. Not Having Enough Supplies
  2. Failure to Do Research
  3. Skipping the Instruction Manual
  4. Skipping the Hair Preparation
  5. Skipping the Strand Test
  6. Using Poor Quality of Bleach
  7. Bleaching Your Hair Alone
  8. Leaving the Bleach Longer than Recommended
  9. Bleaching Too Often
  10. Forgetting to Deep Condition
Hair Bleaching Mistakes Infographic
Common Hair Bleaching Mistakes Infographic

1. Not Having Enough Supplies

The first bleaching hair mistake people make is not being prepared well with the supplies. You may realize that you don’t have enough supplies to start your hair bleaching process.

Before you begin, check that you have everything you need. Make a checklist and double-check it at least twice. This reduces the potential for errors. It will save you a lot of time since you no longer need to run back and forth to the shop.

2. Failure to Do Research

Sometimes, brittle, burnt hair and unpleasant orange tones can be the result of a lack of research. You need to do your homework even before attempting the process on yourself or a client so that you can avoid this mistake.

Ensure the hair is bleachable before you start the process. It’s also common for hairdressers to make mistakes when choosing the right bleach developer.

You can prevent a lot of the typical problems hair stylists go into with bleaching by educating yourself about the bleaching procedure and various developer types.

3. Skipping the Instruction Manual

Hair Bleaching Mistakes - Skipping the Instruction Manual

Skipping to read or reread the instruction can be a terrible mistake to make while bleaching. Every time you buy a new product, even if it’s the same one you’ve been using for years, not reading the instructions can lead to hair loss or orange hair.

You should still read the instructions carefully if you’ve done this a hundred times. Even though it’s the same material you typically use, it’s best to check the packaging for specifics, just in case.

If you read the directions, you won’t risk making the kind of silly errors that may turn your hair orange or lead you to lose your hair.

4. Skipping the Hair Preparation

If you skip the hair preparation, you may damage your hair because of the strong chemicals. If it’s already damaged, brittle, or dry, it’s best to avoid bleaching your hair altogether.

If you do decide to bleach your healthy hair, you should never skip getting your hair ready to bleach. Because the bleaching process uses harsh chemicals, the hair becomes hot and dries out.

You should wait at least 24 hours between washes if you plan on bleaching your hair.

5. Skipping the Strand Test

Hair Bleaching Mistakes -Skipping the Strand Test

When you skip the strand test and just go straight to bleaching your hair, you might risk yourself of getting an allergic reaction or orange hair.

So, it’s important to not forget to take the strand test. You may avoid a potentially fatal allergic response by avoiding contact with the bleach if you are sensitive to its ingredients.

This seemingly insignificant safety measure may prevent some severe mishaps from happening.

6. Using Poor Quality of Bleach

The chemical compounds of poor-quality bleach are often used as part of a cost-cutting exercise, but they might have lasting adverse effects on the hair.

One may say that cutting corners this way is playing with one’s hair’s health. Use only name-brand bleach to avoid hair itching or allergy symptoms when dyeing your hair.

7. Bleaching Your Hair Alone

Hair Bleaching Mistakes - Bleaching Hair Alone

Bleaching your hair alone, especially the hair on the back of your head, can be hard to do. You may not be able to get all the strands.

Having a companion to assist you makes any hair-related task much less daunting.  Don’t do it alone. It’s humiliating if you accidentally overlook some areas, mainly if you had no clue they existed to begin with.

The second pair of eyes might help you catch further hair bleaching mistakes or missed details.

Hair Bleaching Mistakes - Leaving the Bleach Longer than Recommended

Leaving the bleach longer than recommended is one grave mistake that people can make when bleaching their hair, resulting in serious hair issues.

If you leave the bleach on your hair too long, you can permanently damage it. You risk damaging your tresses beyond repair and maybe burning your scalp if you leave the bleach on longer than recommended.

No matter what anybody else tells you, follow the directions and remove the bleach as soon as possible. Just because it helped their hair in no way justifies your trying it.

9. Bleaching Too Often

Bleaching your hair too often can also damage your hair, no matter how healthy it is. You’ll end up drying it up and making it brittle, fragile, or dull.

In a case where you need to get your roots done, just make sure to only bleach your roots. If you need to bleach your whole hair again, waiting a while before using bleach again is recommended.

It takes time to bleach the hair again, so be patient. It’s been suggested that repeated bleaching of the hair in a short period also stunts its development.

10. Forgetting to Deep Condition

Hair Bleaching Mistakes - Forgetting to Deep Condition

When you don’t deep condition your hair before bleaching, it might get tangled, making it hard to brush through. Make sure to note this in your checklist to avoid the mistake.

Always do a thorough conditioning treatment on your hair the same day you bleach it. Deep conditioning will give your hair some nutrients, making it stronger and healthier against any damage caused by hair bleaching.

Hair Bleaching Tips

Tips for Hair Bleaching

To make you feel more confident about your bleaching abilities, we’ve compiled some of the most effective tips for bleaching hair like a professional:

Before beginning any technical work on the client’s hair, you will need to determine whether or not the client’s hair is virgin. This will be of the utmost importance in assisting you in deciding whether or not your hair is currently in a condition that is ideal for bleaching.

About two weeks before the session, begin preparing the hair for bleaching. This powerful hair treatment for conditioning delivers deep nourishing and moisturizing action, which helps increase elasticity and helps strengthen the cuticle of the hair.

To get flawlessly lighter hair, it is essential to thoroughly saturate each strand and area with the product before applying it to the hair. This will help the product to permeate the hair on a deeper level.

Before lightening hair that has already been bleached, it is essential to use treatments that reconstruct and nourish the hair. This is especially crucial in cases where the hair has been bleached more than once.

Because bleaching your strands makes them very dry, you should switch your shampoo with nourishing conditioners. Additionally, deep condition your hair once you’ve completed the process.

Once a week, give your hair a deep-conditioning treatment consisting of warmed coconut oil to get the best results.

Because bleach is harsh on the scalp, you should avoid washing your hair with hot water. This may irritate your scalp. Following the procedure, wash your hair with cold water.

Please don’t wash your hair too often because it can dry up your scalp.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding bleached hair:

What to do when hair bleaching goes wrong?

Dyeing your hair is a simple approach to correcting color inconsistencies. Pick a hue darker than your natural hair colors, such as chocolate brown or black.

Separate your hair into parts so you may give each one a different shade. Color-treated hair may be maintained and repaired by adding OLAPLEX to the dye solution.

When should I stop bleaching hair?

Bleaching should be avoided on damaged hair, such as hair that is dry, brittle, or breaking hair. It is essential to keep in mind that the bleaching procedure will do your hair more harm the darker it is before you start.

How long should I leave the bleach on my hair?

You should not keep bleach on your head for more than thirty minutes at a time. If you leave it on for any longer than that, you run the risk of causing significant damage, including brittle strands.

What hair bleach is least damaging?

Bleach produced by low-volume developers is weaker and less damaging to your hair. Using a low-volume developer will slow down development time but prevent as much harm as possible.

Can bleaching hair cause hair loss?

Bleach has the greatest potential for harm, so it is best to have it done correctly.

Bleaching lifts your hair’s outer cuticle, enabling the bleaching agent to completely enter the hair shaft and react with the stable color molecules, breaking them down into components that will wash the colors right out of your hair.

It also degrades the natural fatty acids on the hair shaft, weakening it.

The experience of lightening one’s own hair may be thrilling. However, you must be aware that bleach and hydrogen peroxide are strong chemicals that should be handled correctly and with extreme care.

Therefore, when you go to the store the next time, make sure you are aware of the most common hair bleaching mistakes that should be avoided while bleaching hair at home.

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