Hi, I have bleached my hair for the first time and I am wondering if I need to bleach further or if it is light enough to tone without further bleaching. I am aiming for a very light ash blonde or possibly platinum (a little scared to go platinum). The pictures are all of the same side of my hair the color looks different in each though. Any advice is greatly appreciated!
It's light enough to tone. DON'T put anymore bleach on it, it looks to me like it's at it's limit. To me it looks platimum blonde anyway, but everyone seems to have a different idea of what that is!
I don't really want it lighter than it is just don't like the yellow hue. Maybe a stupid question but, what do you mean when you say it looks like it's at its limit? I started with fairly light hair and only bleached once with a 10 vol for less than 30 minutes, did I over do it?
At about it's limit, no more yellow will come out without frying it!
You just need to tone it, as you say. It is very pale and likely the palest it will get. Bleaching it will almost certainly not remove the yellow left, that's what toning it for 🙂
I would also, unsolicited of course, to tone with purple shampoo or a teensy bit of violet dye in conditioner. Both pretty much as effective as using oxidative toners (Wella T18 etc) but with none of the damage.
I agree, with a bit of purple shampoo/ conditioner I'd call that platinum! (I also agree that you shouldn't bleach again, you could face breakage if you go any further!). When you say you bleached for the first time was your hair completely virgin to begin with or did it have a dye on any part of it?
I didn't get any Wella toner, I got manic panic ultraviolet and will mix with deep conditioner. I didn't like the idea of using more developer, seemed like unnecessary damage. There was no dye in my hair prior to bleaching. I have naturally "dirty blonde hair" basically a real light ashy brown with natural blonde highlights.
That's good all good 🙂 It was your use of "very light ash blonde" that made me think you might be wanting to use Wella!
I would get a pink as well, Ultra Violet can be too blue for some people, if you have some pink you can tweak the toner to your specifications
Unfortunately, it's likely because the bleach lifted unevenly.
What can I do to fix it?
Not a lot really. Spot bleaching small areas like that would be way too difficult and too damaging. Maybe you could try applying more toner to the more yellow areas, but again, it's going to be tough and avoiding overlap will be nigh on impossible.
What I find happens is the toner just makes the whiter parts more white as they're more damaged and keep grabbing the toner and the less damaged areas just stay more yellow the whole time.
However, in the photo, it doesn't look bad at all. More natural.
When hair is fully bleached, even if it looks really even in colour it can have differing porosity that is highlighted by toning.
Often it will even out after a few washes, if not a protein treatment can help to even out the porosity.
Did you apply the toner to wet hair? This can also help to get an even result
I did a protein treatment before I applied the toner, yes I applied it to towel dried hair.
I'm afraid it's likely you're just one of the unlucky ones (like me) that struggle getting even hair when trying to tone out yellow.