Cut Hair after Bleaching
The only option that I see is stop bleaching my hair, live with the visible new growth for a couple of months and then cut it super short and start all over with new healthy hair. Is this the only affordable solution or are there other options? I’m an adventurous kind of person and going drastically short sounds like fun, but I just want to make sure this is the only option before I give up my long hair.
A: Experimenting with bleached blonde hair is great fun while it lasts, but the maintenance and damage it does to your hair isn’t. Going back to your original color shouldn’t be too hard, though. Here’s what I would suggest before you hack off your hair:
If you’re on a budget; bend over so that your hair hangs downward. Twist your hair in a swirling motion until it is wound tight. Cut off a few inches of the length, which should get rid of most of the dead ends and create lots of dimensional yet blending layers. Gently take the tips of the scissors and make little snips into length of your twisted hair. This will add texture to your layers.
Buy two boxes of semi-permanent hair color at the drugstore or any beauty store. This color should be a neutral medium brown; meaning that it should have a neutral or even ash undertone. You don’t want to cover bleached blonde hair with a brown that has a red, copper or gold undertone, because you risk the chance to have your hair come out with an intense red, yellow or orange tone.
Semi-permanent color won’t damage your hair further because it contains no ammonia. In fact, your hair will most probably feel better after you’ve applied the semi-permanent color. This is because when you bleach your hair, it gets stripped of its natural pigment or melanin. The pigment is the proteins that give your hair its natural color. Bleached blonde hair has very little pigment left, leaving it fragile and damaged. The chemicals in bleach strips the cuticle of the hair, leaving the cuticles frazzled or broken off, tending to leave the cortex of the hair exposed to direct heat, sunlight, wind, etc.
Semi-permanent color contains color-pigments or particles that are designed to stain the structure of the hair in order to color it the desired color. It also contains conditioning and nourishing elements that have been designed to attach itself to the cortex of the hair, thus strengthening and protecting the inner shaft of the hair’s structure. There are also components in the semi-permanent color that are designed to successfully close and seal the cuticles of the hair, so that all these replenishing and reconstructive particles cannot just wash out of your damaged hair’s structure after a few washes.
You’ll have to color your hair with a semi-permanent color once a month for a few months, as the color will still fade due to your hair’s damaged state. But each progressive time that you color your hair with a semi-permanent color, the hair will stain slightly darker and retain more of the replenishing and reconstructive particles.
©Hairfinder.com
See also:
How to color hair
Hair bleaching problems
Hair coloring problems Q&A